The Ten Stages of Awakening
by sfchemist
Summary: Spoilers for Don't Cry For Me Albuquerque. Summary: Mary wakes up in stages. To consciousness. To herself. To Marshall.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** I just couldn't resist doing a post-Cry story.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own In Plain Sight or its characters. Also, I am not a doctor and while I have done some basic research into the medical aspects involved with this condition, most of my knowledge comes from House, MD. I will be taking liberties with the details so it fits with the story, my apologies for any inaccuracies. If they are too great, for any medical practitioners reading this, let me know and I'll do my best to edit in favour of medical realism (which was the original title for this story, btw).

**Spoilers:** Don't cry for me Albuquerque and any thing before that (maybe).

**Summary:** Mary wakes up in stages. To consciousness. To herself. To Marshall.

**The Ten Stages of Awakening**

**Physical  
**

The first time she woke up she managed to open her eyes long enough to register she was in a hospital and to identify the woman sat in the chair next to the bed as someone she knew, although she couldn't work out who she was and why she was associating her with an image of a small child in a blue summer dress, laughing as she ran through a jet of water.

Brandi noticed the movement and watched in hope as Mary's eyes opened and made contact with her own. She stood, leaning on the side rail of the bed, explaining to her sister she was just going to get a doctor, then left.

By the time she returned, nurse in tow, Mary had lapsed back into the coma she had spent the last six days in.

"That's perfectly normal," the nurse assured Brandi as she moved round the bed adjusting things Brandi still didn't understand the functions of and making notes on Mary's chart. "She'll probably be in and out of consciousness for brief periods before she fully comes to."

Brandi stood staring down at her older sister a moment before leaving to call their mom.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time Mary woke up she stared round the room for a minute, trying to focus and after a moment recognised she was in hospital. She stared at the woman dozing in the chair. She wrestled with the desire to wake her and reassure her and the desire to close her eyes herself. She swallowed slowly and painfully and tried to form the word 'Mom' but no sound passed her lips.

There was a noise she couldn't place then another face appeared at the end of the bed. The face smiled at her and Mary could see that the woman was talking; she just didn't know why or what she was saying. She closed her eyes again and let the confusion drift away.

The nurse would, later, tell her mom that she had woken up for a while and Jinx Shannon would curse herself for not being awake and missing the opportunity to look into her daughter's eyes. She was convinced that she'd instantly be able to see if Mary had suffered any brain damage just by looking into her eyes. She'd read a magazine article that said that mothers always knew that sort of thing and she was Mary's mother so she'd be able to tell. She clung to that article, regardless of the fact the doctors kept assuring them that it could be weeks or months before the full extent of any damage was apparent. What did they know? They weren't Mary's mother.


	3. Chapter 3

The third time she woke up it was the fault of the machines in the room. Their incessant bleeping pervaded her dream and dragged her kicking and screaming back into her body. That was the first time she felt the pain.

She didn't open her eyes, somewhere deep in her subconscious she knew opening her eyes would mean she was awake and she wanted to return to the place where the pain had no hold over her. To do that she needed to keep her eyes closed.

The bleeping was drowned out for a moment by a woman's high pitched voice calling a name that Mary couldn't focus on. All her concentration was on returning to the pain-free place.

She ignored the sounds of a nurse moving round her bed, increasing her pain medication. She ignored her mother's pleas for her to open her eyes so Jinx could see that she was alright. Finally her stubbornness was rewarded as the pain abated and her mind was able to drift back into unconsciousness, undistracted by her body's slow recovery.


	4. Chapter 4

The fourth and fifth times she woke up the man was there. At first he was alone and he spoke to her soothingly and kissed her forehead gently. She made an effort to stay awake so she could listen to his voice, so familiar to her, even if the words weren't.

He looked clean and fresh, wearing a shirt that seemed..._wrong_ on him somehow although she didn't know how or why it was wrong. He looked tired, Mary smiled, knowing that she had a place she could go where tiredness and pain didn't effect her.

She listened to his voice a while longer until her own tiredness and pain became more and more distracting and she sought the relief she knew was waiting for her in oblivion. She drifted off with the smile still on her face.

A couple of hours later, Raph would tell Brandi that Mary had recognised him and smiled at him. Brandi would squeal and clap in excitement and make Raph tell her again and again what he had been talking to Mary about and how she had looked.

xxx

Raphael and Brandi's conversation was what woke her the fifth time. The voices seeped into her mind and planted a seed of irritation. A seed that was fed by the increased bleeping in the room. Didn't the machines know that the noise was irritating enough, without speeding it up and introducing irregularities into the rhythm?

She moved her hand to find the snooze button. She just wanted the sound to stop. It wasn't time to get up yet. She only wanted five more minutes sleep. Why couldn't she find the snooze button?

Her hand made contact with something soft and warm. Something that held her hand in place. Something that trapped her. Trapped her when all she wanted to do was find the alarm clock and make it stop. She tried to yank her hand away. Why was the bleeping getting faster?

The voice that had been so calming the first time she heard it now held a note of panic. She opened her eyes to see the clean man looking worried as he hovered over her. She tried to turn her head to see what her hand was trapped on but couldn't. The man was holding her head in place, pinning her down. She tried to draw a breath but couldn't, there was no air in the room. Was that what the bleeping signified – the lack of air?

Suddenly the man was gone from her line of sight, the hand removed from her forehead and her hand freed from whatever had immobilised it. The man's face was replaced with a woman's. The woman placed a mask over her nose and mouth. She tried to push it away but the woman just put it back, talking as she did so to someone else in the room, the man she assumed.

She understood the words 'rest' and 'distressed' but the rest of the woman's sentence was lost on her.

Mary found if she left the mask in place the woman left her alone. She turned her head to see the woman usher the man and Brandi out the room.

That was the first time that it occurred to Mary that the sounds people had been making at her had a meaning attached to them. She lay awake a while longer wondering why she didn't understand more of them and trying to remember what sounds they had made so she could assign them a meaning too.


	5. Chapter 5

The sixth time she woke up a different man was sitting next to her. A man with a name. She knew about names now. And this man had one. Stan.

He looked over at her and smiled.

"Hi," he said.

Mary tried to repeat the sounds, hoping if she did so their meaning would become clear to her.

Stan walked over to her bed and did something out her eye sight. He stood there, not saying anything, just smiling at her gently. A woman entered the room. Mary looked at her and her wayward mind provided her with a word. Nurse.

"She's awake again," Stan told the nurse.

She didn't understand any of his words but watched him intently. Stan. She held his name close to her heart.

The nurse lent over and said, "Hi, there."

There was that word again.

She tried to say it again. No sound emerged.

"Is she trying to speak?" Stan asked.

"I think so," the nurse said to Stan before turning to Mary, "Hey, honey, let me get you some water. You've been on a respirator. Your throat must be sore."

Mary watched her as she spoke following the sounds closely, hoping to pick out a word or two. She was getting more concerned that she couldn't grasp such a simple task.

The nurse returned with a cup of water, helped her sit up and held the water in front of her, making sure the straw pointed in the right direction.

Mary took a sip and was rewarded with a cooling sensation in her throat, soothing an itch that she hadn't realised wasn't supposed to exist. She greedily reached for more. Another sip, larger this time, sent her into a spasm of coughing.

"Whoa, whoa, easy now," the nurse said, easing her back onto the bed, "Just breathe."

Mary lay back and gazed at Stan. He lowered the rail and sat on the edge of the bed facing her.

"I can do that, if you need to get back to something," he said indicating the cup of water.

The nurse handed it over with the instructions that little and often was best and to call her if he needed anything.

As she reached the door, she turned and said, "Not many of our coma patients are lucky enough to have company round the clock. That's some family you've got there."

Stan didn't turn, focused as he was on giving Mary another sip of water, as he said, "I'm not family, I'm just her boss."

"I doubt that very much," the nurse muttered as she left the room. No way was that man _just_ anything to her patient.


	6. Chapter 6

The seventh time she woke up her room was full of people. They were talking to each other and didn't notice when she opened her eyes. She looked at the assembled crowd, trying to fit names to faces. Stan was easy. Brandi and Mom were two of the three women. She stared at the third woman a while trying to associate her with something, anything. It was only when Stan rested a hand on her arm, reassuring her about something that she remembered. Eleanor.

Four down, two to go.

She looked at the man arguing with Brandi. It was the man with the nice voice. Another memory flashed through her mind. She had a vague recollection that he had held her down at some point. She looked away quickly, hoping he wouldn't see her.

She turned to the last man. The one that hadn't moved, hadn't said anything since she woke up. He leaned against the door, half in, half out the room. His eyes were fixed on her.

She stared at him, unable to look away.

"Hi," he mouthed across the room.

Mary recognised the shape of the word on his lips, still unaware of the significance of the word other than it was small and distinctive and she should be able to say it.

She attempted to mimic his action and saw a flicker of concern cross his face when she failed.

She didn't have time to dwell on the issue, though, as her movement attracted the attention of everyone else in the room. Within an instant they were all crowded round her bed, smiling at her. All except the man in the doorway.

The noise of so many people talking to her at once was too much for her to handle. The pain was back, it permeated her entire body and was topped off by a pounding in her head. She closed her eyes, willing everyone away. When she opened her eyes again, the volume had dropped and Stan was no longer at her bedside. She smiled at the thought that her wish had been partly successful, although Stan was the only one she wouldn't have minded staying, he was quiet at least.

She moved her head to peer round Brandi, wanting to see if Stan was still in the room. Moving her head proved to be a bad idea as the throbbing increased, making her feel nausous. She lay still, focusing on her breathing until the feeling went away. It dissipated in time for her to see Stan talking to the man in the doorway. He was obviously gesturing for him to come into the room but the man without a name just shook his head and smiled sadly.

The chatter had dropped in volume again, the people near the bed talking one at a time rather than all at once. Mary wasn't listening, they were speaking too fast for her to understand. Instead she focused on Stan as he returned to the group at the bed.

The other man stayed in the doorway, studying the floor.

Stan was relieved when he rejoined the group and saw Mary smiling at him. Her smile was completely open, without guile and she looked to be genuinely happy to see him. He was surprised to see her look so happy, laying in a hospital bed, when she rarely came across as happy in her life. He was put in mind of another near miss, not long ago. She had been happy for a while after her kidnapping and it was Marshall that had picked her up when she had ultimately come crashing down.

He wondered if Marshall would be there for her this time. He hadn't stepped foot in her room since they'd got the news that her vitals were stable but she was in a coma. Even now Marshall was hovering in the doorway, looking like he was trapped in an invisible forcefield.

A bigger concern for Stan was the fact that Mary hadn't asked for him at all.

Mary dragged her gaze away from Stan to look at the other man at her bedside. He was watching Brandi as she spoke, allowing Mary to observe him unnoticed. He was a nice looking man, the nicest she had seen since she woke up in the hospital. Her recollections before that date were jumbled and didn't make much sense when she was give time to think about them. Still, she couldn't rid herself of the feeling of being pinned down whenever she looked at him.

Raphael listened to Brandi finish telling Mary about the work they had been doing on the house, so it was ready for her return. He turned to Mary to see how she was receiving the news and was pleased to see her looking right at him. He smiled at her, silently reassuring her that she would be okay. She looked away. His smile faded.

Jinx stared down at her daughter, for once happy to let someone else do all the talking. She was waiting for Mary to look her way, she still needed to see with her own eyes that Mary was still in there, that her daughter would be okay.

Finally Mary focused on Mom and was surprised to see tears of relief in her mom's eyes. Mary wondered what had been worrying her, but found the effort of speculating on the answer was too much and hurt her head more than it already did. She closed her eyes and allowed the voices to mingle and merge into background as she drifted off to sleep.

Eleanor was the one to point out that Mary had fallen asleep. She herded them all out of the room with the exception of Raph who wanted to stay a while longer. She suspected she knew why but it wasn't her place to question what, if any, ulterior motive he had.

Marshall was reluctant to leave the door frame he'd spent the entire visit leaning against. Not inconsiderate of his feelings and the bewilderment on his face, Eleanor gently led him away by his arm.


	7. Chapter 7

The eighth time she woke up she was alone. She lay in the dark room wondering where everybody was. She was waking up more frequently and for longer stretches of time, her memories from the previous periods of wakefulness more readily accessible and more coherent each time.

She reviewed the last time she had been awake. There had been a crowd of people in her room, most of whom she could associate with a name and the two remaining people were familiar to her whether or not they had names. That much she was aware of. But she was also aware that she couldn't call them 'the clean man' and 'the other one' when she finally managed to get a sound past her lips.

She was picturing the clean man, trying to work out his name when the door opened and someone entered the room swiftly and silently, only closing the door after checking he hadn't been seen entering the room.

As he approached the bed she could see it was 'the other one'.

"Hi," he said.

He frowned as he watched her try to repeat the word back to him.

Marshall had noticed her do that before but hadn't been close enough to see the amount of concentration it seemed to require for her.

He pulled the chair close to the bed and sat down.

"Sorry, I haven't visited before," he started, watching her closely, "I have my reasons, you'll probably think they're stupid, but I do have them."

He pulled the chair slightly nearer. He saw the puzzled look on her face and considered telling her the whole story. He settled on the abridged version.

"While you were in surgery, emotions were running a little high and Raph and I....Well, we said some things to each other and I thought it was best if I kept my distance for a while and....and you have no idea what I'm saying, do you?"

While he had been speaking he had been observing her. Watching how she focused on his lips as he spoke and mouthed the occasional word a fraction of a second after he said it. Even if that hadn't tipped him off, her lack of reaction to his admission of angry words with Raphael would have.

He sighed and ran his hands through his hair.

"Mare?"

No response.

"Mary?"

Still no response.

"Do you know who I am?"

Her eyes darted from his lips to his eyes.

He leaned back in the chair, hands in hair once more as he considered what to do.

He knew he should get a doctor and tell him what he suspected but he couldn't quite bring himself to leave her side after so little time with her.

He lent forward again, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands so he could watch Mary. She was mouthing a word at him. He read her lips. Hi.

"Hi," he said with a sad smile. He was convinced she didn't know what the word meant, and had just latched onto it for some reason.

Hi.

Hi.

"Heee."

Marshall sat up, startled by the sound coming from Mary.

"Close," he told her, "Hi."

"Hee."

"Hi."

"Hee."

"Okay, now you're just laughing at me," he said with a smile.

A smile that was returned, ten fold, from his partner. Mary's smile reassured Marshall that she was still in there, but it also confirmed the other thing that he suspected; that Mary had no comprehension of what was being said to her.

His mind automatically leaped to the amateur diagnosis of amnesia.

And with that diagnosis came an idea.

"Okay," he said, "Well, I'm Marshall. We work together. We protect people from other people that want to kill them. Which is how you ended up here."

Mary smiled at him, watching him carefully trying to make out the words he said and assign them meaning. He sat next to her, his feet propped up on the side bed as he filled her in on the details of her life.

Mary may not have been able to remember his name or understand what he was saying but she felt relaxed in his presence. The fact he knew her well enough to put his feet up reassured her that she _did _ know him, that the familiar feeling she felt was real and that meant she might get through whatever was happening to her. She listened to his slow drawl, a refreshing change from the high speed chatter of all her other visitors, until she fell asleep for the first time since she was shot, seeking refuge in slumber rather than retreating into unconsciousness.


	8. Chapter 8

The ninth time she woke up wasn't long after the eighth. She knew that because it was still dark and the 'other man' was still there and wearing the same clothes. It was him shaking her gently that had woken her up. He was no longer alone, however, he now had two men with him, in matching white coats. She watched them as they stood at the end of the bed, talking amongst themselves. When the 'other one' saw her looking at him, he walked over to her side and resumed his former position. She saw one of the white coats gesture for him to take his feet off the bed but the 'other one' just shrugged and shook his head.

Mary giggled.

The three men stared at her.

One of the white coats wrote something down.

The taller white coat move round so that he was next to her and opposite the 'other one'. He looked at her and asked her a question. That much she recognised from his tone. She just didn't have a clue what he wanted to know. She looked at the 'other one' hoping he would explain it to her. He just sat regarding her steadily, patiently waiting for her to answer.

She looked back at the white coat as he asked another question. It was different from the first question: It didn't take as long to ask.

She picked out the word 'here', but couldn't work out what he was asking.

'Do you want to be here?' - maybe.

That made sense.

She shook her head, as she had seen the 'other one' do.

The white coat at the end of the bed wrote something else down and made a comment to the one next to her. She tried hard to follow what they were saying.

Marshall watched as Mary's attention flicked between the two doctors and occasionally to him. He'd found Doctor Jacobson as soon as he'd been sure that Mary was asleep and told him what he suspected. Dr Jacobson had immediately paged the hospital's neurologist, Dr Franklin.

The two of them were now swapping complicated medical jargon. He'd understood that Mary could hear, although she'd shaken her head when asked if she could, but he'd lost the thread of the conversation shortly after that. Mary kept looking at him, like she was asking him to explain what they were saying. All he could do was shrug in mutual incomprehension.

Finally he couldn't wait any longer, he took his feet off the bed and stood up.

"So, what's going on? What do you think is wrong with her?" he asked.

"Are you family?" Dr Franklin asked.

Marshall contemplated showing him his badge but found he didn't need to as Dr Jacobson assured his colleague, "He's close enough."

Robert Jacobson had had several encounters with a certain Stan McQueen over the last few days and while he didn't know the man in front of him, he had been told in no uncertain terms to cooperate fully with him.

"Well, Mr..." Dr Franklin began.

"Mann," Marshall supplied.

"Mr. Mann, well, we don't believe that Mary has amnesia at this point, her lack of communication skills point more towards aphasia. We'll need to do some tests to discover if this is the case and the extent of the condition..."

"What's aphasia?" Marshall cut in before he could get lost in the technical talk.

"It's when the language centre of the brain is damaged. Most commonly by a stoke but obviously in Mary's case it's from her brain suffering oxygen depletion for a while. It manifests in a variety of ways, we'll give you more details when we know what sort she has."

"How treatable is it?" Marshall pressed, resolving to do his own research as soon as he was able.

"There are too many variables..." Dr Franklin temporised.

"Take a guess." Marshall growled.

"There's no 'treatment' as such," Dr Jacobson told him, "Some people make a complete recovery for others it's only partial."

"How long does a complete recovery take?"

"Recovery is often spontaneous, it can occur after a few days or after a month."

"For those that partially recover, there's speech therapy..." Dr Franklin attempted to tell the man in front of him, but he had been a doctor long enough to realise when someone had been given enough information and was unable to process any more.

The two doctors exchanged a glance as Marshall moved back to Mary's side, lost in thought.

"I'll arrange for a speech-language pathologist to see her," Dr Franklin told his colleague quietly, "We'll do a fresh CT scan as well, then take it from there."

Dr Jacobson nodded, his eyes on the woman in the bed and the man sat next to her, "I'll call the family," he said with a grimace. He hated making phone calls to family members.

He made a couple more notations on Mary's chart then accompanied the neurologist from the room.

Marshall sat, head in hands, as he considered what the doctors had told him. He didn't fully understand the implications but recognised that they could be wide reaching and long term. He was startled out of his introspection when Mary reached over and put her hand on his head.

She didn't know what the white coats had told him but he was obviously upset and she couldn't stop her hand from moving to comfort him, despite the considerable pain moving caused her.


	9. Chapter 9

The tenth time she woke up she was surrounded by people again. The white coats were back and they were talking to Mom, Brandi and the clean man. The 'other one' hovered in the doorway.

He smiled at her when he saw her looking at him then returned his gaze to the group at the end of her bed. She did the same. The white coats were obviously explaining something to the trio in the room. Mary focused her attention on what they were saying.

She was pleased to find she could understand more of what was being said than on previous occasions.

They were obviously talking about her.

"...We won't know more until the speech pathologist has assessed her."

"When will that be?" Jinx asked the doctor.

"We've got her an appointment for this afternoon. So we should know some more by this evening, we'll arrange for a counsellor to meet with the three of you this evening to explain all this in more detail."

Marshall couldn't help but notice he wasn't included in that invitation, but he held his tongue.

"What do we do until then?" Raph asked.

The doctor glanced over at Mary.

"Well, she's awake now, so there's no reason not to talk to her. Just keep your sentences short, she'll have a better chance of understanding them."

"Thank you, Doctors." Jinx said as she walked towards Mary.

The doctors left the room, nodding to Marshall as they passed. Jinx sat in the chair next to Mary's bed and took her hand in both of hers. The tears she had held back while she was listening to the doctors now threatened to spill over. She felt Brandi's hand on her shoulder and she let the tears come.

Mary stared at her. What had upset her so much? She'd caught the gist of what the doctor had said, something about a meeting later today, but she hadn't understood what the meeting was to be about or the reason for it.

Raph was talking to Brandi rapidly and Brandi was shaking her head in response, tears welling in her eyes. What ever the meeting was going to be, it obviously wasn't good. She felt her heart rate increase. She wanted to know what they were talking about! Why wouldn't they tell her? And why weren't they looking at her? Couldn't they see she was right there?

She looked over to the door, expecting to see the other man, hoping he would tell her what was going on. He wasn't there.

Her heart rate increased some more, echoed by the machines still attached to her.

The clean man sat on the edge of her bed and tried to stoke her hair, talking to her all the while. She wriggled out of his grasp, ignoring the shooting pain in her abdomen.

Brandi and Jinx added their voices to Raph's, imploring her to calm down but the resulting clamour only served to agitate her more.

She was rescued from her torment by the arrival of a nurse who took one look at the situation and promptly set about removing the excess people from the room. As they were shooed out, they filed reluctantly passed Marshall, now returned to his regular position in the doorway.

Mary calmed down in time to see Marshall's triumphant smirk as Raphael sauntered by him. She wanted to ask him what that was about but couldn't find the words.

The nurse remained in the room to check her vitals as they returned to a more acceptable level. She increased the pain medication Mary was receiving when she noticed her clutching her side.

Marshall moved to the nurse's side, flashing her a quick smile before focusing his attention on Mary.

The nurse regarded him a moment then looked at the monitors which showed that Mary's heart rate had almost returned to normal.

"I've given her some more morphine," she told him, "she'll probably be out in a few minutes, but you can sit with her until she falls asleep, as long as you don't excite her."

"Thank you," he replied as he moved the chair so he could assume the comfortable position he'd found during the night. As he propped his feet on the edge of the bed, he earned a reproving glare from the nurse but she refrained from commenting when Mary placed a hand on his leg.

"So, Mare," he began, "Aphasia? Huh?"

Mary frowned, not understanding the word even as she appreciated the slow delivery.

"Yeah, I didn't know what it was either. Trust you to get something rare."

She smiled at him.

For the first time since she had woken up, she understood what was being said to her. Marshall noticed the interest in her eyes, a change from the confusion that he'd seen there too often in the last couple of days.

He continued, "There's something wrong with your brain. It's not processing language like it should. Do you understand?"

She nodded slowly.

"Good. That's a good sign. The doctors will do some tests later. Then we'll know what sort of treatment you need. Understand?"

She nodded again.

"Any questions?" he asked her with a mischievous glint in his eye, teasing her gently.

* * *

**AN:** That concludes part 1 of The Ten Stages of Awakening (Physical).

Part 2 (Mental) will deal with the extent of Mary's injury and treatment and will be told in a more normal story format - It's not easy writing a story from someone's POV when they don't understand what's going on around them. I hope I've managed it in this part, I just don't fancy writing the next two sections the same way. Don't expect part 2 to be posted anytime soon, though, I want to finish _Albuquerque, we have a problem_ before I get carried away with this, still there's plenty of time before the new series...


	10. Chapter 10

**The Ten Stages of Awakening**

**Mental**

Marshall was kicking himself.

How had he not seen it? How had he not recognised aphasia? What good was all that reading if he couldn't even diagnose that? All the signs had been there, the lack of comprehension, the trouble speaking, the inability to tell her family to go to hell. Even when the doctors had told him, he still hadn't recognised the word.

At the time all he had really heard were the words, 'brain damage' being whispered over an over in his mind until they ran together to form a hissing noise that had drowned out everything else.

Now, in the quiet of the empty corridor, his mind had finally calmed enough for the self recrimination to begin.

xxx

"Can you point to the green circle?" the woman asked.

Mary reached out a hand and let it hover over the cards on the table as she deciphered the sounds the woman had made. Finally, she let it rest on the middle one.

xxx

Raph paced up and down the hallway outside Mary's room.

He had been kicked out of the room again when the speech-language pathologist had arrived. He'd spent the afternoon struggling to understand what had happened to his beautiful fiancée. The doctors had explained it to him but English wasn't his natural language and he'd not known a lot of the technical terms they had used. He'd tried asking Brandi and Jinx to explain some of the things he had missed but neither of them had been able to help.

The pacing was a sign of his frustration. He was frustrated with himself for not being able to understand. He was frustrated with the doctors for not taking the time to explain. He was frustrated at the lack of information.

The one thing he had understood from the conversation with the neurologist was that they didn't know what was wrong with Mary. They might have tried to disguise it in long words and medical jargon but it seemed that the answer to every question was 'wait and see'.

And all the while, there was Marshall, standing silently in the doorway with that smug half smile on his face as if he knew everything and was enjoying Raph making a fool of himself by displaying his ignorance every time he asked a question.

xxx

"And put these cards in order so they tell a story," the woman told her.

Mary looked at the pictures of a young boy putting on a pair of ice skates, buying a ticket at a counter, another of him out on the ice and one of him walking with his friends. She spent a moment wondering if that was him arriving or departing the ice rink then started arranging them.

xxx

Stan was searching the hospital for Marshall.

He'd got a garbled message from him that afternoon. Something about sacks and a hat and possible brain damage. He'd decided it would be easier to find Marshall than try and decode his message.

He finally located him in an empty corridor.

Marshall was sat at the end, on an unused gurney, head resting on the wall behind him with his eyes closed. Next to him sat what was obviously an overnight bag, its contents strewn over the bed indicating Marshall had been using this spot as his hiding place for a while.

"Marshall?" Stan called, not wanting to startle him.

Marshall opened his eyes and sprung off the bed.

"Chief!" he greeted.

"I got your message, but I didn't understand it," Stan told him.

"The doctors think Mary has aphasia as a result of the oxygen depletion," Marshall said, getting straight down to business. "They don't know much more at the moment but she's in with a specialist and there's going to be a meeting later when they know the results of the tests. I need you to be there. I'll give you a list of questions to take with you..."

"Where do you need me to be?" Stan asked, trying to process all the information Marshall was throwing at him.

"In the meeting," Marshall replied as if he was speaking to a child, not seeing why Stan would ask such an obvious question.

It suddenly dawned on Stan that Marshall wasn't intending to be present at the meeting. He rubbed his head as a headache began to form. He couldn't understand Marshall's reluctance to be near Mary. Previously he'd noticed that his inspector could barely bring himself to enter her room, choosing to loiter in the doorway throughout one visit. And now he wasn't planning on going to an important meeting on Mary's prognosis. It wasn't like him.

"Why won't you be there?" he asked, hoping to nip whatever problem Marshall had with visiting Mary, in the bud.

Marshall grimaced, "I don't think I'll be welcome."

Stan waited with a look at Marshall that had convinced many a witness to tell Stan whatever he wanted to know.

"Raph will be there," Marshall said when he realised he wouldn't get away without some form of explanation.

Stan nodded, choosing not to delve any deeper into that particular can of worms.

xxx

"Repeat after me, 'Mary'," she was told.

"Mmmmm," she said.

xxx

Catherine Young closed the door behind her.

She was instantly accosted by a tall, Hispanic looking man.

"Is she alright?" he asked.

"Please, sir, could you give me a minute?" she replied.

He took a step back and allowed her to consult the chart in her hand. She made a few notes on her newest patient's condition then flipped back to the front sheet to find information on her family.

She looked up. "Are you Raphael?" she asked the man hovering nervously at her elbow.

He nodded.

"Mary is fine. Well, as well as can be expected at the moment," she quickly amended. "I see I'm meeting with you and the rest of her family later. I'll explain everything in more detail then. Until then, if you want to sit with her you can. Just remember to keep your sentences short and don't be surprised if she becomes irritable or frustrated if she doesn't understand."

"She's always irritable," Raphael muttered, but was quickly silenced by a hand on his arm from the blonde woman who had just approached.

Catherine consulted her chart again and decided that was probably Mary's sister, Brandi.

"Go on in," she encouraged wanting to delay any question and answer session until the meeting later on.

xxx

Mary looked up as the door opened.

She hoped it wasn't the woman returning. She'd asked her lots of question, set her tasks and made her speak. Now, she was exhausted and dispirited. She didn't remember things being this hard. Things that should have come naturally to her now required her complete attention and she didn't like it or understand why.

Even simple things like saying her name had sapped her energy as she focused on copying the shapes the woman's mouth had made in the hope of producing the same sound.

She just wanted to rest now, not answer more questions.

She was relieved to see the clean man enter her room and smiled brightly at him. Brandi followed him and returned her smile.

They took seats next to the bed.

"Mary?" the clean man began slowly.

Mary was too tired to try to respond even though she recognised her name.

"I love you, Mary," the clean one told her.

"Nnnnaaa?" she forced herself to say, her curiosity outweighing her tiredness.

The clean man exchanged a puzzled look with Brandi.

"Nnnaa?" Mary tried again, pointing at the clean man.

The clean man still didn't understand.

"Mmmm...Reee," she said with her hand on her chest. "Nnaam?" she asked again, slapping the bed in frustration.

She looked at the pair of them, hoping for an answer but could see tears welling in Brandi's eyes. Obviously her question was upsetting her. She hadn't meant to make Brandi cry. She gave up trying to find out the clean man's name and sighed loudly. She lay back in the bed, wincing at the pain in her side. She closed her eyes until the pain dissipated and when she opened them the clean man and Brandi were gone.


	11. Chapter 11

**AN:** Thanks to BuJyo for her help with the medical and hospital based aspects of this chapter. I've altered it slightly since she read it so any mistakes are my own and no reflection on her.

* * *

Raph sat next to Mary's bed as she slept.

The meeting with the speech-language pathologist had gone on a lot longer than Raph had expected and the news had been much worse than he'd been prepared for. Dr Young and Dr Franklin had taken them through each aspect of Mary's anoxic injury and her expected prognosis. They had taken the time to answer all of their questions and reassure each of them.

The last few days had been hectic after the monotony of Mary's continued coma. This was the first chance he'd had since she'd woken up to sit and reflect on everything that had happened and everything that might yet happen.

The initial phone call from Brandi had been a relief after days of waiting, hoping and praying that Mary would wake up soon. He had been so happy when she woke up and smiled at him. Then there had been a frenzy of visits and Raph hadn't had much time alone with his fiancée.

What little time he'd had, had ended when _he _had turned up and Mary wouldn't even look at him any more.

The doctors had said that only family members were to be given access to Mary, but at some point that had expanded to include Stan and Marshall. It made Raph so angry that everyone just assumed they were family. They weren't. Why was he the only one who could see that?

He'd been pleased when the doctors arranging the meeting hadn't included Marshall. He knew it was petty but couldn't help the feeling of smug satisfaction he had as he'd walked past the other man, on his way into the meeting room.

Marshall, thankfully, hadn't even attempted to join the meeting but Raph had been surprised when Stan had walked in. Raph had been dreading Marshall's presence, knowing he would be showing off his medical knowledge and his 'closeness' to Mary. Just who did he think he was? He was just a colleague, not family. Raph was her family now. When was Marshall going to get that?

Stan's presence, on the other hand, he could deal with. It was easy to see that as her boss, Stan was interested in her recovery and eventual return to work. But his list of questions and the intensity with which he noted down the answers had made Raph wonder if there was more to his interest than how quickly he would get his inspector back.

But whatever the cause of Stan's interest, Raphael decided he would still rather have Stan be present than Marshall. He hoped that maybe Marshall was beginning to get the hint. He had waited outside the meeting without being told to and he'd been visiting less since...Raph turned his thoughts away from the harsh words he and Marshall had exchanged and back to the meeting. If Marshall's absence was an indication was anything, Raph thought it was a sign that he was leaving him and the rest of Mary's family alone to deal with her injury and rebuild their lives.

Raph just couldn't understand why they were so invested in Mary's recovery. Even as a member of a team in his previous career he still couldn't comprehend the depth of feeling between the three Marshals. He knew their work was dangerous, he only needed to glance around the room to be reminded of that, and that Mary relied on them, but he couldn't help but resent them for their roles in the recent events.

And now the doctors were telling him that Mary's injury wasn't just physical. That even though she may recover physically, she might never fully recover from the anoxia. If she had died, that would have been one thing; never to have her again, never to touch her again, never talk to her again. It would be hard but he knew that life would go on and in time he would recover. But to have her alive but not herself? The same but different? That was something else entirely.

Mary shifted in her sleep, drawing Raph from his introspection. He glanced at the clock and stood to leave. It was late and he had to work the following day. Well, maybe not 'had to'. Peter had been sympathetic about him taking time off, telling him to take as much as he needed. Raph had taken him up on the offer immediately after Mary was shot, but as her coma had dragged on he had found himself drifting back to work to escape the confines of the hospital and to be somewhere where he didn't feel useless. Now with the prospect of weeks or months of therapy ahead, the idea of something with an immediate result such as selling a car held a new appeal.

He placed a kiss on Mary's forehead and left her to sleep.

xxx

Marshall loitered in the hallway.

He was trying to avoid drawing attention to himself. The nurses bustled around him, the doctors hurried past, all ignoring him as he leant casually on the counter reading a paper. If his job had taught him anything it was that it was easy to hide in plain sight as long as you looked liked you belonged.

Marshall was currently busy 'belonging' in an area where he could see Mary's door but he was at a distance from it. He was waiting for Raphael to leave so he could visit Mary. Stan had faithfully relayed all the information from the meeting to him and now he was anxious to see her, but he didn't want to be caught sneaking into her room by Raph.

Finally he saw the door open and Raph emerge and walk down the hallway, away from Marshall. Marshall waited a moment longer, then folded up the paper and made his way nonchalantly to Mary's room. He glanced up and down the corridor to see if he was being watched as he pushed open the door and entered.

xxx

Catherine Young stopped at the nurses station on her way to her next patient.

The small group of women clustered there were in hushed conference over something. She approached the three nurses and listened in.

"No, he's her secret lover," one said.

"No, he's not," the second dismissed.

"Why else would he sneak visits at night when the family's gone home?" the first one argued.

"Maybe he's on shift work and this is the only time he can visit," the second suggested.

Catherine looked around the corridor to see who they were talking about. She noticed their eyes flicking to a tall man bent over a counter a little way down the hall, reading a paper. She didn't recognise him but always enjoyed listening to the speculation and gossip of nurses so stayed where she was.

"I heard he got here before the family right after she was shot," the third nurse said, entering the conversation for the first time.

"Where did you hear that?" the first one asked.

"The ER nurses. They were the ones that told me he was a US Marshal, too," she added.

Catherine looked at the man again, reassessing him in light of the new information. She wondered how she could have taken him for anything other than a Marshal, it was so obvious once she knew. She wondered if he had something to do with her newest patient. She'd seen from Mary's chart that she'd been shot in the line of duty but hadn't bothered to see which line of law enforcement she was with.

Her interest piqued, she was disappointed when the nurses broke up and went their separate ways. Catherine remained where she was a little longer. She'd just noticed Mary's fiancé leave and was curious to see what the tall man did next.

She watched as Raph traipsed down the corridor, looking exhausted, then turned to see the Marshal also watching the retreating man. The Marshal didn't wait long before making his way into her patient's room.

Catherine noticed his furtive glance around as he entered the room and wondered if the first nurse had it right when she named him Mary's secret lover.

xxx

Marshall woke to the sound of the alarm function on his phone. He stretched and rubbed his eyes, trying to get his bearings. The faint morning light was all that illuminated the room and as he looked over at Mary he was unsurprised to see her still asleep.

She had been asleep when he had arrived last night. Obviously her meeting with the speech pathologist had exhausted her as she hadn't woken in the several hours it had taken him to fall asleep in the plastic chair next to her bed.

He stood and watched her sleep for a few minutes before letting himself out of the room just as a nurse was about to enter. He smiled and winked at her, cutting off any questions she might have about his early morning presence in Mary's room.

"Shh...Don't tell anyone I was here," he whispered conspiratorially.

The nurse grinned at him and let him pass. He made his way down the too familiar hallways until he reached the locker room where he had managed to locate and jimmy open an empty locker. He grabbed what he needed from his stash of clean clothes and went in search of the fitness area provided for the hospital staff and the showers there.


	12. Chapter 12

Mary's speech had improved over the last few days. She had been working with the speech pathologist on a daily basis and was able to form a range of words although it still required a lot of will power to do so.

She could copy words more accurately although it took effort and concentration to do so and the words didn't always hold any meaning for her. The words that came to her easily provoked confusion among her listeners and she was beginning to wonder if this thing she had was contagious - she could see no other reason for their lack of comprehension.

She was understanding more of what was being said to her, not necessarily all the words, but with the confused tones and expressions she was able to grasp that she wasn't making herself understood and her frustration at their incomprehension was growing.

And to make matters worse, the one person she could decipher easily she hadn't seen for a couple of days. She felt her frustration ratchet up a notch as she vowed to give the 'other one' a piece of her mind as soon as she saw him. Assuming she could make herself understood, that was.

xxx

"Aphasia manifests in many ways," Catherine Young, the speech therapist, explained to Jinx once again. "Mary currently is having trouble understanding words. Words aren't necessarily attached to meanings at the moment, but she can understand a lot of what you say to her just from your tone and expression. Aphasics often have heightened perception of expression which lets them grasp meaning."

Jinx clasped her hands together and stifled a cry. The last few days had been hard on her as she struggled to take in the information the doctors had been giving them on top of trying to accept that her baby girl may never recover.

Mary's nausea and vertigo every time the physio therapists helped her stand was distressing, but the doctors had reassured her family that it would pass and her physical prognosis was good. They couldn't be nearly as reassuring about her mental state, however, and Jinx felt helpless every time she watched Mary battle to form the simplest sentence and even then get it wrong.

"What about when she talks?" Jinx asked.

Catherine sighed, "She's showing good progress. We've ruled out global aphasia as she can repeat words and follow directions, but she's started displaying classic symptoms of nominal aphasia. She's showing confusion when it comes to nouns, an inability to recall names or words. It's hard to detect on top of her other speech problems, but it's allowed us to narrow down the area of the brain that's damaged and refine our treatment methods."

"Is there anything I can do?" Jinx asked, sick of the helplessness that had pervaded her entire life.

"Just be patient," Catherine said, standing to leave, "It may seem slow at the moment, but she's making progress. We still don't know how much of a recovery she'll make, but we'll reassess in a few days."

xxx

Stan sat in his office going over the paperwork that would ensure the expenses for the speech therapy would be covered.

The office was dark except for his desk lamp but the lack of illumination, rather than mask the sources of distraction always present in the office, only served to let his mind wonder. Filling out the forms dealing with the extent of her injury and the rehabilitation required was forcing Stan to deal with Mary's injury head on. And that was leading him down the 'What if' roads in his mind.

He was still reeling from the meeting several days ago, where the doctors had warned them that Mary may never fully recover. Stan had been glad at that moment that Marshall had not been in the room. When he'd come out of the meeting, he'd been able to gloss over the dim prognosis as he reported back to Marshall, choosing to focus on the positive aspects of what had been said and the technical details of Mary's recovery. But now, as he leaned back in his chair and rubbed a weary hand over his eyes, Stan had to consider that she wouldn't be returning to work and what to do if she didn't.

He would have to find Marshall a new partner. A task he didn't relish and one he suspected he would never have to complete. A suspicion in the back of his mind said that if Mary didn't return, neither would her partner. That Marshall would lose his taste for WITSEC if Mary wasn't there was something that it pained him to consider, but he wouldn't be the man he was if he ignored the facts and ideas that didn't sit well with him.

The other idea he was being forced to consider was that even if Mary recovered fully, he would still have to find a new partner Marshall. Something about his behavior over the last nine days had been off. His refusal to see Mary was unmissable and unimaginable, yet Stan had to imagine all the causes and possible outcomes to head off future trouble.

He didn't know what had occurred between the partners to cause Marshall's odd behavior, but something was obviously stopping Marshall from visiting her. Stan hadn't seen him in her room since Mary had first woken up and by all accounts none of Mary's family had seen him either. Whatever it was that was keeping him from her bedside had to be serious. And if it was serious enough to keep him away from her when she was injured, Stan had to wonder if they would be able to fix it if Mary ever recovered.

That left Stan with several untenable scenarios running around his head. He rubbed his eyes once more, pulled up the files of all the marshals that had put in for transfers over the last couple of months and started to review them.

xxx

The rumors surrounding Marshall had grown and multiplied and finally filtered to the nurse's station opposite Mary's current room.

He had found his previously unrestricted access to Mary's room questioned the last couple of days. He had tried showing his badge and hoping no one would inquire further but he had soon found the scheme only worked on the young or temporary nurses. The full time nursing staff assigned to this wing of the hospital had quickly become more suspicious and less helpful.

He had been a familiar sight in and around the ER and ICU, nobody thinking it strange that he was there as much as humanly possible. Even after his yelling match with Raph, the nursing staff had turned a blind eye to his comings and goings. They understood the bond forged between partners when lives depended on that bond.

Since Mary had regained and retained consciousness, she had been moved to another area of the hospital and Marshall was finding his nocturnal visits were beginning to raise questions.

His visit the previous night had been curtailed completely when he failed to come up with a suitable reason for being there outside visiting hours. On his way out, though, he had caught a break and overheard a comment that had given him inspiration.

So, here he was, going against his instincts and making a show of being unobtrusive. He was loitering around the corner of the corridor, bunch of flowers in his hand, peering at the nurses station and Mary's door from time to time.

Every time one of the nurses looked up he did his best to look nervous and duck out of sight slowly enough that they saw him hiding behind the wall. Finally one of the nurses approached him.

'Show time,' he thought as he watched the middle aged woman walk toward him.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"No, thank you," he said not wanting to appear too keen.

She fixed him with a steely stare.

He sighed and gave in.

"Could you put these in Inspector Shannon's room, please?" he asked, handing her the flowers.

She peered suspiciously at them. Marshall ran his hand through his hair and prepared to weave his tale.

"Please, Nurse...?"

"Hunter," she supplied.

"Nurse Hunter, I know I shouldn't be here but I don't want Mary to wake up and think I haven't visited. If she at least sees the flowers she'll know that I have."

She took the flowers from his hand and looked at them more closely.

"There's no card," she pointed out.

Marshall sighed loudly and his hand through his hair again.

"I know. Her fiancé mustn't..." he hinted, building on the most popular rumor the nurses had invented to explain his presence, "...Anyway, she'll know they're from me. Daisies are her favorites. Raph never..." he trailed off, shaking his head, hoping the woman would buy the idea that he was having an affair with Mary.

"I thought you were her partner. Her work partner," Nurse Hunter specified, having heard all the rumors.

"I am," he admitted, deciding to throw in some truth, albeit sparingly. "Mary and I work together, that's how we met and where we fell in love. She was going to leave Raph to be with me. But...but...then she got shot and now I can't see her. He blames me. I've lost my best friend and the woman I love just because her fiancé is mad at me."

Nurse Hunter could see the man before her was obviously upset. The way his voice broke on his admission of love for the injured woman and frustration at being prevented from seeing her were too real to be faked. The story of forbidden love fit with many of the things she had heard about the man often seen lurking in the corridors of the hospital, a man who only visited at night when the rest of her family had left.

The idea that he had only just won the woman of his dreams then almost lost her to a bullet and may still lose her to brain damage was too much even for an experienced nurse like Nurse Hunter.

"Come on," she said, "her family's gone home for the night."

Marshall hid his triumphant smile as she ushered him into Mary's room.


	13. Chapter 13

Marshall leaned over and placed a kiss on Mary's forehead, whispering, "See you tonight."

Mary heard the three little words and her scrambled brain assimilated them and merged them with the tone in which they were uttered and provided a translation.

Mary watched Marshall leave her room, wondering if he'd actually told her he loved her or not.

xxx

There had been a fresh bunch of daisies on her nightstand every morning for the last week when she woke up. She knew they were from the 'other one'. She could remember telling him that daisies always made her smile, but she still couldn't remember his name.

She'd been told that she'd made good progress in the ten days since she had regained consciousness, but it felt very slow going to her. Her inability to recall her partner's name, a man she had worked with and shared her life with for almost seven years, was just one of the many symptoms that made her feel like she'd made no progress at all.

Two mornings after the daisies had first appeared, they'd been accompanied by a large bunch of red roses.

As surely as she knew that the daisies were from the 'other one', she also knew Raph had brought her the roses. His name had come to her in the middle of the night when the pain of her gunshot was keeping her wake. She had called out incoherently at the stabbing sensation in her abdomen and ended up whimpering Raph's name even as she was mentally begging for the 'other one'.

Most nights she had no proof, other than the daisies, that he'd even been there, but she suspected that her partner had spent almost every night of the last week in her room, watching over her as she slept. It was the kind of goofy thing he'd do and she couldn't help but smile when she thought of it. Her smile always faded quickly, however, as hot on the heels of the comfort of knowing he had spent the night, was the question of why he never visited during the day.

His absence during the day was doubly frustrating as she was sure that he would be able to understand her. He always did and she could see no reason why her current lack of communication skills would change that. She was working so hard to get better, just to convey her most basic needs to her family and doctors, but some days she felt she'd made no progress as all she got were puzzled looks and more notes in her chart.

This morning had been slightly different as she had woken to a bunch of dandelions in place of the daisies. She chuckled as she saw them and began to wonder if Marshall was just tidying up his yard and off loading the rubbish in her room.

Her amusement didn't last long as the laugh turned into a coughing fit that made her sigh in frustration as she contemplated the day ahead.

Her physical recovery was progressing well, but she was still in a lot of pain, not least because she was unable to articulate how and when she hurt. And goddamn did she hurt. Her physio was scheduled for after breakfast and she wasn't sure she was ready for another session of that torture. The physio wore her out physically and the afternoons drained her mentally as she struggled to communicate in her speech therapy session.

Logically, she knew what was wrong with her. Catherine had explained it to her several times until she was sure that Mary knew what was happening in her head. Logically, Mary knew that the words she used weren't always right, that she was substituting words for others or just not being able to think of the word she wanted at all. Her inability to name her partner was the most prominent example of not being able to remember words, but she still couldn't tell which of the words she used were wrong. None of them felt wrong as she was saying them, only the reactions of the people around her told her when she was wrong.

Catherine had also explained that most of her understanding was coming from others feelings being expressed through their tones and inflections. It had taken a while for Mary to grasp the fact that what they were saying wasn't necessarily what she was understanding.

She could form short sentences correctly if she focused on each individual word, likewise she found if she concentrated on just listening to the words people said she would understand to a certain degree. But with her family, it was impossible to have a conversation about anything without emotion coloring the words, be it real of false. Her mom and sister could make a three act opera out of buying a loaf of bread with worrying ease.

She had had several frustrating conversations with Jinx and Brandi for that very reason, but she was now stuck in a infuriating loop with Raph.

Apparently calling a rose by any other name was just confusing.

"You don't have to stop by before work just to bring me flowers," Mary was trying to tell him, "Wash stuff and a change of clothes would be more useful. I don't even like roses."

Unfortunately, her emotional state wasn't conducive to focusing. The presence of the roses had her too riled to concentrate on what she was saying and all Raph got was: "Short stop before home, there's no guilt here. Condoms and a disguise would be more useful. New Year's Day is a bust."

Raph looked at her puzzled. Her words made no sense to him but she was animated and emphatic about New Year's and he reminded himself of the image of her laying still, hovering near death as she lay in a coma, to chase away the building resentment.

"Then we won't go out New Year. We'll stay at home and celebrate, just the two of us," he said, deciding to humor her.

He sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand and Mary sighed in frustration as she heard his condescending tone, the sort that you would use talking to a small child.

"I've left home," she grumbled.

Raph just smiled at her patiently and patted her hand.

"I'll come back after work," Raph told her.

"Can you bring some things for me?" she wanted to ask. She said, "Marshall never asks me."

Raph stood up and dropped her hand at the mention of the other man. His smile faded. He went to leave the room, but stopped in the doorway. Looking down the corridor, he saw Stan coming towards him. He nodded to him and turned back to Mary before he left. She had noticed his sudden distance in response to her reasonable request and it had pissed her off.

Aware of Mary's rapidly deteriorating mood, but not wanting Stan to report back to Marshall and give him the excuse that he wasn't taking care of Mary properly, he asked stiffly, "Is there anything you need?"

Mary nodded and said, "Some quarters, an airplane and Cool Hand Luke."

"I don't understand," Raph sighed, sharing a confused look with Stan as he entered the room.

"Bring me my airplane," Mary said slowly, taking care to be very clear.

"I don't know what you're asking for," Raph told her, trying to keep his patience but his frustration leaked through into his voice.

Mary's sensitivity to tone and inflection meant she picked up on the faint trace of anger in his words.

"I want my airplane! Where are my airplanes?" she demanded.

Raph ran a hand through his hair – a sure sign of stress – as Mary started to get agitated.

"I don't know what you want!" Raph snapped, his voice catching on the tears of frustration threatening to overwhelm him.

Mary stared at him.

"I don't know what you want, Mary," Raph said again, the defeat in his voice swamping any other emotion.

Mary just looked at him as if he were a stranger and Raph could stand it no longer. He spun and stalked out the room, leaving Mary and Stan regarding each other in silence. Stan broke eye contact first and cast his eyes around the room until he located the chair next to Mary's bed. He collapsed into it and briefly wondered about its slightly odd position. Usually it was against the wall, where the medical staff pushed it when they needed access to Mary, or it was pulled up close to the bed, from someone sitting in it as they held Mary's hand. This morning it was further back from the bed, and as he sat, he noticed a mark on the metal rail of the bed. A mark that looked suspiciously like a footprint, as if someone had put their feet up on the rail. The marshal in him couldn't help but notice it was probably someone with long legs, assuming the chair hadn't been moved since.

His eyes took in the two bunches of flowers on the nightstand and Stan couldn't help but do a little teasing.

"Hey, Mare, which chump brought the roses?" he asked with a smile. "Did they get the speech about commercialization and assuage of guilt? Don't they know you at all?"

Mary looked at the door that her fiancé had just stormed out of and shook her head sadly at her boss's question.


	14. Chapter 14

**AN:** Many thanks to BuJyo for her medical expertise and helpful comments.

* * *

Marshall looked up as Stan returned to the office.

"How is she?" he asked, distractedly.

"Okay," Stan replied automatically as he threw his coat into his office. He turned back to Marshall, who was sat at his desk seemingly unconcerned, and amended his assessment of Mary's condition. "No. She's not okay."

Marshall looked up but took pains not to seem overly interested. At this point he couldn't remember why he was trying to maintain the façade in front of his boss, but it was now so ingrained in him to avoid appearing to be anything more than a colleague that he couldn't break it. Unless it was at night, when he was allowed to indulge in his fantasies to ensure continued access to Mary.

"Not okay how?"

"Jesus, Marshall! How can you not know? What the hell is up with you?" Stan snapped at him.

Marshall shifted uncomfortably. Stan backed off slightly, rubbing his head as he took the seat next to Marshall's desk.

"She's bad, Marshall. Her speech is better, but she's talking jibberish. Kept asking for an airplane..." Stan tailed off, trying to think what Mary could have been asking for.

Marshall hadn't actually spoken to Mary in the last week so he had no way of knowing the extent of her current problems with nouns. He had read her charts and done a lot of research in his free time so he had a theoretical knowledge of her condition, but hadn't confronted it head on. His exclusively nocturnal visits meant that Mary was nearly always asleep when he arrived and usually hadn't woken when he snuck out in the morning. The nurses had assured him that it was normal, and in her best interests, for her to sleep as much as she needed.

For Stan to be so visibly upset on his return from a visit with Mary was making Marshall wonder how bad it was. Marshall looked at his boss as he sat slumped in the chair across from him. He looked ten years older than he had a month ago.

Marshall almost broke his vow then and there and drove over to the hospital to see for himself. He held himself back, though, as something Stan said resonated in his mind. Mary was asking for an airplane? That could mean anything in Mary's screwed up brain, but the most obvious association was leading him to the conclusion that Mary was planing an escape from the hospital.

Stan broke into Marshall's thoughts with an equally disturbing thought of his own. "I'm thinking I might need to post security on her. The doc says it's like word association when she speaks and I don't want her associating anything to do with her witnesses..."

Marshall shifted again, knowing what Stan was getting at, that he was expecting Marshall to volunteer to supervise visits. His uncomfortable movement was designed to convey that he was feeling guilty about his supposed abandonment of Mary.

Stan noticed the movement and filed it away with the other observations he'd been making about Marshall and his avoidance of Mary. He knew the emotion it conveyed wasn't genuine which only served to deepen the suspicion that had begun to dawn in the car on the way back to the office.

The footprints on the bed, left by a man with long legs. A comment about Raph. Marshall sat on a gurney with an overnight bag. Marshall's lack of response to his snapped comment moments ago. The unending trivia about roses the day before.

"When was the last time you went home?" Stan asked out of the blue.

Marshall looked up from his contemplations of the symbolism of planes and anything he could think to connect to them. His surprise and guilt at being caught out was written clearly on his face. He fiddled with the pen in his hand as he attempted not to answer.

"Marshall?"

"I don't know," he admitted, sweeping a hand across his eyes.

"Have you been there every night?"

"No. I fell asleep here a couple of times."

"What happened with Raph?"

Marshall threw the pen across the desk, stood and stalked over to the coffee pot.

"She was asking for a plane? What else did she say?"

xxx

"Sorry I'm late," Dr Bronstein said as he slid into the chair next to Catherine.

Mary's supervising doctor had called a meeting of all those principally involved in her care. The surgeon had been the last to arrive, but Dr Jacobson had only just got there himself. The neurologist, Dr Franklin, had been using the couple of minutes of quiet to have another look at Mary's chart. Catherine had been thinking about the latest chat she had had with one of the nurses.

Dr Jacobson got their attention and said, "As you know, I just wanted to meet with everyone quickly to assess Mary Shannon's readiness to go home. I'd like to keep her two or three more days, but baring any complications in that time and unless you have any reasons not to, I think we can discharge her. Thoughts?"

He opened the floor to comments and Dr Bronstein jumped in.

"From my point of view, there's no reason to keep her any longer. The surgery went well considering what we had to work with and the two codes. All my follow-ups have been good. Her scans are clean and there's no sign of peritonitis," he rattled off quickly.

"There's no sign of _any_ infection," Dr Jacobson put in and the surgeon nodded his agreement. Jaconson continued, "Her stitches are out and she's moving as well as we can expect. There's been a small amount of vertigo and nausea so we've limited her movement slightly, but that seems to be abating, in part because we switched her to oral pain meds."

The neurologist looked up from the chart. "She seems to be following a faster than average recovery pattern," he said, a question implied in his tone.

Dr Bronstein shrugged, "She's young and was in peek physical fitness before she was shot. You know how these law types can be. They're tough and always chomping at the bit to get back to the job that landed them here in the first place."

Bronstein's offhand tone irritated Jacobson, but he couldn't disagree with his assessment. He added, "I'll read her the riot act about taking it slow for the next few weeks."

He paused thoughtfully for a moment.

"I think she'll follow my orders," he noted, causing Catherine to look at him with a puzzled expression. From all she'd heard about Mary, she was independent and fierce and not likely to follow anyone's direction but her own.

"She seems less pushy than I was lead to expect," he explained, seeing Catherine's questioning look.

"I think that might be due to her inability to communicate, rather than any natural desire to listen to you," she teased lightly.

"You think she's depressed?" he asked.

"I don't think it's out of the question. Frustration and depression is common among fully functioning people when they're not being listened to or can't make themselves understood, let alone aphasics," she pointed out.

Jacobson contemplated her words for a moment, then asked, "Should I write a script for SSRIs?"

Catherine shrugged, "Ask her. She'll know best how bad her depression is, if any, and if she needs antidepressants."

He nodded sharply and turned to Dr Franklin. "Do you have anything to add?"

Franklin shook his head, "Not really. CT scans showed no lesions, but fMRI showed reduced activity in the dorsolateral frontal cortex and the thalamus which could account for the aphasia. Only time will tell if activity in those areas will be restored. There's not much more I can do for her, it's all Catherine from here," he added with a smile in her direction.

Jacobson looked at her as well, waiting for her assessment of the patient.

"She's shown good improvement over the last week. She's moved from global aphasia to a more localized, anomic aphasia. Her speech is improved although still slow and slurred, especially when tired. She'll need a few more month of therapy, but at her current rate of recovery..." she shrugged, uncertainty surrounding every aspect of her patient's condition.

"So you've no concerns about sending her home, properly supervised?" Jacobson pushed.

Catherine winced at the words 'properly supervised'.

"What?" Jacobson asked.

"I'm not sure that she'll get the..." she searched for the word, "...appropriate supervision at home."

Jacobson consulted the chart once again. "It says she lives with her mom, sister and fiancé. One of them should be able to..."

He tailed off as he saw Catherine wince again.

"I'm not sure that they are the most restful...or helpful company. It might be better if we keep her here."

"Mmm..." Jacobson said, obviously not pleased with the idea. "What makes you say that?"

"I don't know. Something about her family just seems off. She gets frustrated with them very quickly and they don't seem to be coping well with her inability to communicate."

Catherine saw the look on Jacobson's face that said 'Not my problem' and realised she'd have to sell it more.

"For example," she continued, "she keeps asking for an airplane, but none of her family has a clue what she means. When she asks them, they just look at her, puzzled, until she starts yelling at them and one of the nurses ushers them out. Not very restful."

Jacobson appeared to consider this new information while Dr Franklin asked, "An airplane? Could she want to leave? That's what airplane says to me."

"That's what I thought as well, but I asked her that and it's not what she wants. If her family can't work out the associations she's making at the moment, I guess we'll never get them."

"Still, I'd like to have a chat with her, if I may. She presents a fascinating case..." Franklin said, his professional curiosity piqued.

Catherine nodded her assent as Jacobson came to a decision.

"There's really no reason to keep her here for more than a couple more days. Her home situation may not be ideal, but it's better that than keeping her here unnecessarily," he concluded.

Everyone indicated their agreement and parted ways to deal with their other patients.

xxx

Marshall let himself into Mary's room.

Mary looked over at him, instantly forgetting that Catherine was in the room along with one of the doctors, the one whose name she couldn't be bothered to learn.

"Hi," she said slowly.

"Hey," Marshall smiled. "I brought you some things."

He gestured to the bag slung over his shoulder before dropping it on the end of the bed.

"Did you bring sparky?"

Marshall looked worried for a moment as he struggled to decipher the words in Mary's slurred speech. Everyone had been telling him she was much improved, but he hadn't been present for her first halting attempts at speech so there was no improvement to be seen from his point of view. Just panic and worry until he worked out what she was asking.

The question reassured him that his Mary was still there and he laughed, "No. You're not allowed to shoot anything for a few more weeks."

He unzipped the bag and started to pull out the goodies he had retrieved from her house. Mary sat up in bed further to see what her partner had brought her.

As Marshall laid out a couple of changes of clothes on the bed, Mary asked, "My airplane?"

Marshall smirked as he pulled Mary's favorite pyjamas from the bag and threw them at her. She caught them deftly before they hit her in the face. She shot Marshall a glare, knowing he was performing his own neurological check on her reflexes, then bundled up the pyjamas and buried her face in them.

"My airplane," she muttered in relief as she hugged the soft, clean, familiar pants and top Marshall had provided.

Catherine looked at Marshall calculatingly. She saw the smug grin on his face and knew that linking airplane to pyjamas wasn't just a lucky guess on his part. She gestured for him to pull up a chair, wanting to see just how much of Mary's garbled speech the man could decipher.


	15. Chapter 15

**AN: **Sorry about the slow post, this chapter was a complete bitch to write. I hope I've done it justice and I'll try to be quicker in future. Thanks to BuJyo for her comments and support.

* * *

Marshall pulled up the chair Catherine indicated, glancing at the unfamiliar woman with curiousity. His attention was pulled back to Mary as she started chatting to him unintelligibly.

"Thank God you brought a change of clothes," she thought she was saying, "I was beginning to think I was going to spend the rest of my life with my ass on display." The first part of her sentence was a meaningless string of words to Marshall, but she finished with something that almost made sense: "live in an art gallery with Jay."

Marshall stiffened at the mention of their witness. Maybe Stan's assessment was right – Mary shouldn't be left unattended. As he thought about what an ass Jay could be, what Mary was saying dawned on him.

"But it's such a nice ass," he couldn't help but tease.

Mary stared at him in shock for a moment. She didn't understand the words he'd just said, but it was the first time anyone had made a joke with her since she'd woken up. And for some reason, it made her feel more like an actual person than all the false compassion and well wishes she had received in that time.

She smiled at him and relaxed, and as she relaxed her speech became less garbled.

"Is the sun up?" she asked, miming a confused look at her non-existent watch.

Marshall chuckled, "Yes, the sun's up. I got special permission to be here."

Mary frowned, "Don't need tardy note from Uncle Stan."

Marshall shifted uncomfortably, not knowing how much to tell her, how much she'd understand or how much the truth would upset her if she did understand.

Mary saw his discomfort and in a wholly un-Mary-like move, changed the subject.

"The daisies need water," she said.

Marshall stared at her a moment, a small frown forming as he tried to work out what she meant.

Mary pointed to the dandelions on her nightstand, which had replaced the daisies of the day before, and said, "Water."

Marshall's frown disappeared as he realised she was being literal and coherent, even if she had misnamed the flowers on her stand. He got up to walk around the bed to get the small vase, brushing past the doctor he recognised as the neurologist and the woman he didn't know, but who was chatting with quiet enthusiasm with Dr Franklin. As he past them, he shot Mary a questioning look with an accompanying jerk of the head in their direction. Mary giggled and shrugged.

As Marshall headed for the adjoining bathroom to fill the vase, Mary waved her arms to get Catherine's attention and called, "Help. Stem cells."

Catherine moved to her side in time to prevent her from straining something as she reached for the jeans at the end of the bed. As she helped Mary sit up and wriggle into the jeans, she heard Marshall call back, "That's it, no more Scientific American for you."

"Shut it, Friend. Know where your power switch is."

Marshall appeared in the doorway, head cocked to one side. "Are you saying you know what turns me on? Or are you looking for a way to switch me off?" he asked. "Either way, Mare, that's no way to speak to a friend."

Mary glared at him as he replaced the vase of dandelions next to the much more ostentatious display of roses. He peered at the roses for a moment then asked, "Do you know these need water too?"

Mary glanced over and shrugged as she gestured for Catherine to pass her one of the tops that Marshall had provided her with.

"It's not murder," she muttered as she pulled the hospital gown over her head.

Marshall smiled, "Fair enough." He examined her as much as he could with her back to him, trying not to dwell on the bandage on her back where the bullet had past right through her. He was relieved to see her skin had lost much of the sallowness of his first few visits and while she was obviously stiff, her movements didn't seem too compromised.

He returned to his seat as Mary started to brush her hair, the clean clothes and simple act of grooming making her feel more human, more herself. That and the fact that she'd managed an entire conversation without either the person she was talking to losing patience with her slow and convoluted speech or her getting irritated at herself for not being able to express herself.

Marshall leaned forward to snag her hairband off the edge of the before it fell on the floor, then sat back and put his feet up on the railing as he twirled it in his hand. He watched Mary's hair fall in soft sheets, like rain cascading down a window, as he listened to Dr Franklin exchange pleasantries with the woman and leave the room, only to greet someone outside the door.

Mary pulled the brush through her hair, disgusted by the greasiness she could feel. Maybe now she had her toiletries, she could finally persuade them to let her have a proper shower. She was just contemplating the healing powers of a bath, when the door opened again. She didn't look up from the knot she was working at, assuming it was the doctor returning for some other pointless test or question, so it was Marshall's suddenly too stiff posture that told her all was not right.

Raph froze in the doorway when he saw Marshall sitting in the chair next to his fiancée, looking very comfortable and relaxed for a man that wasn't supposed to be there.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

Marshall turned in his seat and tried to not let his discomfort show.

"I'm visiting my friend," he said calmly.

Raph frowned and walked into the room. As he neared Marshall he growled so that Catherine couldn't make out his words, "I've told you before, you're not needed here."

Marshall grimaced at the reminder, not that he needed it, the entire fight with Raph was permanently emblazoned in his mind and heart.

xxx

_He caught up him in the hallway outside Mary's room._

_Marshall had disappeared a couple of hours before on one of his mysterious errands, leaving Raph to brood with only Jinx and Brandi for company. Francesca had tried to befriend him, but her presence was just a physical reminder of why Mary was there and she had finally got the hint and left him to his thoughts._

_When Marshall had returned he had been more agitated than before. He paced the length of the waiting room with quick, measured steps while muttering to himself. Raph had asked him several times what was wrong, but Marshall had just shrugged off his questions or said something placating that was obviously supposed to reassure but only had the opposite effect. Raph was reminded of what Marshall had told him earlier – that he wasn't withholding information, that he genuinely didn't know what had happened._

_That had obviously changed. Marshall now knew something, something he wasn't going to tell Raph. _

_After fourteen hours of waiting with nothing else to focus on, Marshall's presence and behaviour was beginning to piss Raph off. The constant pacing and demands for information from the hospital staff would have been justified if it was Marshall's fiancée laying in the ICU, but it wasn't. And that was only the start of what was pissing Raph off. _

_Raph didn't normally have much contact with the other man, so he didn't have much to compare his current behaviour to. He had rationalized the lack of contact with Marshall as Mary being Mary and locking out of as much of her life as she could. But now he was starting to think that Mary's need to compartmentalize her life had been unwittingly aided by Marshall._

_Marshall's avoidance of him may have gone unnoticed in the wider world, but in a 20 by 20 room it was easy to see. The few occasions they had met before, Marshall had been civil, but as the night turned into the small hours of the morning and stretched into the cold light of day, Marshall's ability to maintain the polite façade was stretched thin and the cracks were beginning to show. There had been a couple of derisive snorts when Raph had asked one of the nurses to explain something he didn't understand. The veiled looks he'd been receiving all evening had taken on an increasingly chilly air and when Marshall had said, 'she told me she told you,' his voice had held a tone hadn't sat right with Raph, as if Marshall didn't approve of him knowing what Mary did for a living._

_Raph was beginning to wonder if it was his mind playing tricks on him or if Marshall had some other secret he was keeping from him. Some reason he didn't like him. Raph shook his head to dismiss the childish thought, putting it down to unusually high levels of worry and stress and not enough sleep. _

_The stress was obviously getting to Marshall as well. The pacing had stopped, Marshall now leant against the wall, one arm outstretched to support himself while the other hand massaged his brow as his mouth twitched and trembled in what was unquestionably a running internal dialogue._

_The moment he chose to slam his fist into the wall and stalk out of the waiting room had surprised everyone, including Raph who had been watching him at the time._

_After a moment of stunned inaction, Raph followed Marshall into the hallway. He caught sight of him at the nurse's station and noticed him slip his badge back into his jacket pocket before being led down the hall by the nurse. Raph followed at a discrete distance until the woman indicated a room and left Marshall to return to her station. Marshall hesitated outside the door, one hand poised to push it open, and Raph instantly understood what, who, was on the other side of the door._

_Marshall's moment of hesitation, designed to allow him to collect his thoughts also allowed Raph to catch up with him._

_Marshall was too focused on the door to notice Raph approach him until he suddenly found himself spun around to face the man._

"_What are you doing?" he asked in surprise._

"_I could ask you the same thing," Raph replied. When Marshall looked at him blankly, he continued, "There's a room full of worried family in there. What gives you the right to just flash your badge and get to see Mary before we do?"_

_Marshall couldn't think of a reasonable answer. He'd been too focused on his inability to get Lala to talk and his own culpability to give much thought to Mary's family in the last hour. He'd made sure they had everything they had needed of course, before seeing to his own needs. His needs, which really only consisted of one need. A need to see with his own eyes that Mary was still alive, that she was breathing again even if it was mechanically aided, anything to erase the horrible image of her too still chest from his mind. He hadn't considered her family would want to see her as much as he did. After all, they didn't have that picture seared into their minds or the ER staff's words ringing in their ears. _

_His silence was obviously irritating Raph, but he could no more put into words why he needed to see Mary so desperately as he could snap his fingers and turn the clock back to before she got shot._

"_Why are you even still here?"Raph asked, his frustration evident._

_This time Marshall didn't need to think to find an answer, it was just there in his brain, but he knew that Raph could never hear the real reason and that anything other than the truth would sound false without his usual steel grip on his emotions. So once again he remained silent, this time through choice. But something about his silence must have given him away._

"_Ay Dios mio__!" Raph muttered, having had a startling moment of insight into Marshall's actions. "You're in love with her, aren't you?"_

_Again Marshall didn't answer, but his flinch at the baldly stated truth couldn't be hidden. Raph spat out a bark of a laugh and rounded on him._

"_She's mine," he hissed, "so stop thinking whatever it is you think!"_

_It was Marshall's turn to laugh humourlessly. "I've got news for you, Raph. Mary doesn't belong to you or anyone. So if you want me to back off, you're gonna have to make me." He drew himself up to his full height, expecting Raph to be intimated and back off._

_Raph didn't back down, but his stare turned calculating. He reckoned he'd be able to take Marshall in a fight if it came to it, they were the same height and Raph knew he had several pounds of muscle on the man and the physical conditioning to use it. But being with Mary had taught him a few things, not least of which was that a hurt inflicted with words lasted much longer than its physical counterpart. And at that moment, he wanted nothing more than to inflict pain on something, someone._

"_Is that what you tell yourself?" Raph asked, spite masked by the mocking tone. "That it's okay that she comes home to me every night because she doesn't really _belong_ to me."_

_Raph took a step towards Marshall, who backed up slightly until he felt the presence of a wall behind him._

"_What other lies do you tell yourself?" Raph asked, low and menacing, "What stories do you have to make yourself believe...to convince yourself you're not pathetic, pining after a woman who would never want you?_

"_Do you tell yourself that you're not her type? That you aren't what she needs right now? That she needs a man who can take care of her, someone man enough to satisfy her, strong enough to protect her? What do the doubting voices whisper in your head at night? Do they say that you'll never be what she needs?"_

_Marshall's already fragile control over his emotions evaporated and he grabbed the other man by the front of his shirt and spun around so Raph collided with the wall with an audible thump, their positions from moments before switched._

_He growled low in Raph's ear, "What the hell do you know about what she needs?"_

_Before he could continue, Raph pushed him off of him with surprising force and replied, "I know she needed someone to protect her tonight. Where were you then? Huh?" He advanced on Marshall. "Where was her knight, her protector, her lover?" he practically spat the last word._

_Marshall backed off, making no replied. How could he answer when he'd been asking himself the same questions over and over since he'd got that phone call, to no avail._

"_That's what I thought," Raph continued, still determined to inflict as much pain on the man he held responsible for Mary's injury as possible. "You know who she's going to blame when she wakes up, don't you? Do you honestly think she's going to want to see you? You, who abandoned her when she needed you most?"_

_Raph walked to Mary's door and paused, turning back to the dejected man in the hall to deliver one last shot, "It was your job to protect her, but you quit tonight. You weren't with her then, so you don't get to be with her now."_

_He waited until Marshall looked up at him and finished, "She doesn't need or want you, so just go."_

_He watched in triumph as Marshall turned and walked away, abandoning the woman he loved for the second time in 24 hours._

xxx

"Get out!" Raph yelled when Marshall made no attempt to move.

Marshall looked from Raphael to Mary and back again. He stood slowly, indecision written clearly on his face and Catherine watched as he struggled to make the decision about whether to stay or go.


	16. Chapter 16

**AN**: I'm back! I've been suffering with writer' block brought on by tempting fate with my promise to update faster in the last chapter. But the Gods have finally stopped punishing me (I hope).

This chapter not only marks my return to FanFic, but also the beginning of **spoilers for season 3** as I attempt to align this story with events of that season while not losing the original idea behind it. Wish me luck – the story was supposed to be finished before S3 even started, so this should be interesting.

* * *

"_I've told you before, you're not needed here."_

For a moment, Marshall lost himself in the memory of the last time he had heard that and the guilt that had been threatening to overwhelm him ever since.

"Get out!" Raph yelled when Marshall made no attempt to move.

Raph's demand snapped Marshall back into the present. His eyes, when they refocused on the room, happened to be resting on Mary and he realised that she had his wrist in a vice-like grip.

He turned to Raph, not bothering to disengage Mary's hand.

"No," he said softly.

xxx

Eleanor sat at her desk, her eyes glued to her computer screen but seeing nothing. She was wondering when she had let herself get this attached. How had she let this group of misfits creep past the defensive wall she had erected after John's death? It had seemed so safe when sitting in the Phoenix office, to transfer to Albuquerque where the office was rumoured to be inhabited by a real-life, fire-breathing dragon. Someone she could take her rage at the world out on. Someone she had decided to dislike before she had even left Phoenix.

But when she had arrived, the dragon had been injured and scared, starting at its own shadow and her supposedly hardened heart had betrayed her as she reached out.

And now she was paying the price. She had spent the last 24 days sick with worry, her heart breaking a little each time she looked at Marshall; a mirror for the pain and loss that was still too recent in her. She had never wanted to be in that position again. She had had enough of the hospitals, the waiting, the praying, the uncertainty. But now she was going through it all again.

Maybe it was time to move on. Perhaps it was better to cut all her ties now, before she got too involved. Or was it already too late for that? Was she already too far in to get out again? That first day in the hospital it hadn't seemed so. She had managed to ignore everything apart from the needs of those around her. She had become the organizational automaton that had ruled in the days after John had died. Both times it was only in the subsequent days that the full impact of what had happened had hit her. Then she had broken down, weeping quietly by Mary's bedside until she was exhausted.

That had been her first clue that she had gotten too close. She shouldn't have been that affected by a colleague getting shot. She wouldn't have been if she'd managed to maintain the distance she had promised herself she would create between her and the rest of the world.

Somehow the dragon had edged nearer each day. They had edged nearer to each other. Both wanting, needing someone to lock horns with to confirm they still had the ability to fight. And so her space had been slowly eroded by the dragon with the fiery breath. And the fire had burnt away her resistance to friendship. In her wake, the dragon had brought the only other people that were brave enough to stand before the fire and emerge unscathed.

Once she had got close enough, it was easy to see that the dragon was tame and protected by her handlers as much as she protected them. But you had to be standing really close to see it. And by standing that close, she had been caught in the backlash. That was her punishment for not keeping her distance from the world.

Her thoughts were disrupted by the sound of the phone in Stan's office ringing and his voice as he answered. She switched her focus back to the computer and opened a new internet browser, typing the words 'Federal Jobs Network'.

Maybe it was time to recreate that distance.

xxx

Raph stared at Marshall, taken aback at his quiet defiance.

"What?" he hissed.

Marshall said nothing, just continued to stand next to Mary's bed as he gently peeled her hand off his wrist.

"You have no right to be here. You're not family," Raph said, getting quieter with each word as his anger drained from him. "I'll call security."

Marshall smirked as he flashed a glance at Mary before turning to Raph.

"Good idea," he said, pulling his cell out of his jacket pocket. He dialled swiftly and waited a couple of heartbeats for the person on the other end to pick up.

"Hey, Stan," he greeted cheerfully as he turned slightly away from the other occupants of the room. "I think you were right. I think we should put someone on Mary. She could easily breach security without even realising it." He stole a quick glance at Catherine while Stan replied. He didn't want to say too much in front of her – it was bad enough that Raph knew what Mary did for a living.

Catherine was trying to to appear to be listening, but she didn't fool Marshall. She cursed all one-sided conversations as she heard Marshall reply, "Well, I'm already here."

As she wondered what sort of secrets the two marshals shared, he added, "I might as well take the first shift."

Catherine couldn't help but notice the smug tone in which he said it or the body blow that his words dealt Raph. She watched as Raph's shoulders slumped in defeat, dejection written all over him. He knew he had lost this round and she watched as he escaped from the room. His exit was unnoticed by all but her. Mary was looking intently at Marshall as she tried to follow his end of the conversation, a small smile hovered at the edges her mouth.

Marshall was facing the wall as he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. He nodded sharply and said, "Okay, Stan. I'll talk to you later."

He turned back to Mary, who was staring at him approvingly. She had been wondering when someone would have the common sense to make sure she didn't inadvertently spill her witnesses' names and addresses. It was a thought that had been plaguing her since she had realised the extent of her injury but she hadn't had chance to convey her concern to Marshall thanks to his exclusively nocturnal visits.

She smiled as she realised that Marshall had known anyway. He had known and taken appropriate steps, even if he was deliberately timing his intervention in order to score points off Raph. And what was up with that? What had gone on between the two men that she was always so careful to keep separate. She had known on some level that any prolonged contact would inevitably lead to a blow up between them. And it seemed she had been right. She knew at some point she would have to make nice with Raph. Their relationship was stormy enough without Marshall burning bridges for her. She sighed as she realised that at some point she'd also have to take Marshall to task for that. That was a whole other storm she needed to prepare for.

For now, though, approaching storms or no, she was just grateful that Raph's impassioned, fractious presence had broken on the rocks of Marshall's calm, solid one.

xxx

Eleanor came to relieve him a few hours later.

She peeked cautiously round the door and didn't see Marshall instantly. She edged into the room and stared at the sleeping Mary for a moment. A shuffle behind her made her turn. Marshall was standing next to the door in his 'at ease' stance. He looked like he was ready for anything and like he could stand there all day, which was probably true Eleanor reflected.

"How is she?" Eleanor asked quietly.

Marshall shrugged. "Physically, at least, she's getting better."

"When will she be able to come back to work?" she asked, not wanting to abandon her dragon without some assurance that she'd be alright.

Marshall shifted uncomfortably, "I don't know. She's still not...right."

"But she'll be back soon, right?" Eleanor pushed.

"I don't know!" Marshall snapped. He immediately looked ashamed, running his hand through his hair and avoiding her gaze.

Eleanor regarded him patiently.

"I'm sorry. It's been a long day."

"Yeah, I know," she murmured sympathetically. "Stan said it's the first time you've visited."

"Yeah, kinda. It's the first time I've spoken to her since..." his voice broke and he stopped speaking to collect himself.

Eleanor waited. She watched as Marshall took a couple of deep breaths which only seemed to make him worse.

"It's bad, Eleanor," he choked.

Eleanor reached out a hand steady him. He swiped a hand across his eyes, brushing away unshed tears she guessed. She watched as Marshall somehow managed to pull himself together between one breath and the next.

"I should go tell Stan," he said. "Do you need anything before I go?"

Eleanor shook her head, "I have a book and Mary for company if she wakes up."

Marshall nodded and smiled at her before casting one more glance in Mary's direction and leaving the room. He made it twenty paces down the hallway before he heard his name being called. He turned to find Dr Jacobson hurrying to catch up with him.

"Ah, Mr Mann," the doctor said, "I've been meaning to have a word with you. I've just been having a chat with Catherine."

"Dr Jacobson," Marshall interrupted. "I was hoping to run into you, I wanted to ask when will Mary be able to go home?"

"Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about..."


	17. Chapter 17

Raph sat in the poorly lit room. He and Peter had finally fixed the walls, but they hadn't got round to reattaching the light fittings yet. For now though, the darkness suited his mood. An empty glass sat next to him, resting precariously on the arm of the sofa.

Loose wires dangled from the wall opposite, mocking him and his lofty goal of having the house fixed before Mary's return home. After the third glass of rum, Mary's recovery had come to symbolise his and Mary's entire relationship – him struggling to make a home for himself and Mary, with her always going to fast for him to keep up.

Not that it mattered: Mary might be being discharged today, but she wasn't coming home.

No. Somehow Marshall had persuaded the doctors that Mary should go home with him. Raph couldn't work out how the man did it. How did he manage to get his way in everything? Raph had managed to keep him away from Mary for over three weeks. The accusations he had thrown at Marshall had been intended to hurt at the time, but Raph had regretted them afterwards. He wasn't a cruel man, however he believed in fighting for your family and on that occasion he had had to fight dirty to keep his intact. His dirty tactics had worked, Marshall – the one threat to his family that he could fight that night – had been temporarily disarmed and forced to retreat. He had been forced out of all the meetings regarding Mary's health and treatment, allowing Raph to fight those battles in his own way without having to constantly protect his flank. Then, in a surprise move, Marshall had reappeared bearing the most innocuous looking weapon – daisies – and in an instant, the battle turned and Raph was left licking his wounds. How had Marshall done it? How had he turned all the doctors against him? Why had he even been in that second meeting?

xxx

"_Dr Jacobson," Marshall interrupted. "I was hoping to run into you, I wanted to ask when will Mary be able to go home?"_

"_Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about." Dr Jacobson gestured for Marshall to accompany him to his office. "You're listed as Mary's medical proxy and while this should ultimately be Mary's decision, I wanted to get your opinion first."_

"_Of course," Marshall agreed, wondering where this conversation was going._

_Dr Jacobson opened his office door and ushered a slightly confused Marshall inside._

"_There are some concerns about sending Mary home," the doctor began, snapping Marshall's attention away from the medical textbooks on the shelf._

"_What concerns?"_

"_The main one is that sending Mary home won't...er...be in her best interests..." Jacobson attempted to phrase the problem tactfully. "A couple of colleagues have raised the question of how restful her home environment is...?"_

_Marshall's snort of wry amusement confirmed what Catherine had been telling him._

"_Medically, there's no reason for Mary to stay here beyond the end of the week. But we don't want to send her home if she's going to end up back here after a relapse."_

"_What do you suggest?" Marshall asked, all too clearly seeing the problem._

"_There's a rehab facility. I was going to get her admitted as an outpatient, but I might be able to get her in as an inpatient..." Jacobson started rummaging through some paperwork on his desk to find the admittance criteria. "The place has a lot of experience with stroke patients and has good results."_

_Marshall winced in anticipation of Mary's response to that option. Still, he took the brochure Jacobson handed him and leafed through it. The pictures were of old people smiling as they underwent treatment. The sentence about hospital gowns being optional caught his eye. That was something at least. Then his eye travelled down the page to where it talked about ID wristbands being worn at all times and patients needing to be accompanied if they wanted to go outside. No way would Mary be happy being locked in a place full of old people where she'd need to raise her hand every time she wanted to go somewhere. He put the brochure down slowly, his mind working furiously to come up with an alternative._

"_I have another suggestion," he finally offered._

xxx

Raph had been blind-sided by the move. He had denied it at first, sure he had misheard or misunderstood what they were telling him. But as he realised they were serious, he had begun to see how skilfully Marshall had manoeuvred to create this victory.

Marshall had stood quietly by as Dr Jacobson had explained the options to Mary and Raph, seeming, to all appearances to be solely concerned with Mary's recovery and well-being. But Raph had seen the triumphant gleam in his eyes when Mary had chosen option B and agreed to stay with Marshall. And he knew he hadn't imagined the scornful look Marshall had shot him as he resumed his position near the door from where he now oversaw all interaction with Mary.

His officially sanctioned guard duty was how Marshall came to hear the fight that followed Mary's decision. Raph had pleaded with her to come home and let her family take care of her. She had just stared at him blankly. He had tried to explain that it would be best for her and that the doctors didn't know what they were talking about when they said she would get more rest with Marshall.

All Mary had said was, "Marshall knows about rivers. I am not a river."

That was the point that frustration had gotten the better of Raph. He had started yelling at Mary, demanding to know what she meant. Mary had just looked at him, confusion and disappointment showing openly on her face at his response and inability to understand her. She had glanced at Marshall for some indication as to what she had said that had made Raph so angry. Raph spun to face Marshall in time to see his answering shrug and the pitying stare focused on him.

"Do you know what she means?" Raph had asked, pride flying out the window as he pleaded with his rival, seeking some indication that Mary had understood while begrudgingly acknowledging Marshall's superior insight.

"She means she wants to come home with me."

Raph couldn't tell if Marshall was reinterpreting Mary's words to suit himself, and even now, Raph still wondered if she had even understood what he was saying. Surely if she had understood she would have told Marshall and her doctors that she wanted to go home. He had to believe that she hadn't understood rather than willingly choosing Marshall over him and her family. He knew she could be selfish but surely she wouldn't be so selfish when her family needed her at home, would she?

xxx

"Hi, Home," Mary greeted as Marshall walked into the room.

Marshall looked puzzled at the name she had devised for him. He added it to the growing list of names she had called him: Friend, Other One, True, and now Home. His mind reeled at the implication – was this what she associated him with? Was this what she truly meant when she called him an idiot or Doofus?

"You know my name's Marshall, right?" he asked, turning his hypothesis into a joke so he could test it.

"That's what I said," Mary scoffed, "'Hi, Marshall.'"

"So are you ready to go?" Marshall enquired, although it was plainly obvious that Mary had been ready for some time.

She was sat in the wheelchair she had commandeered on finding out the hospital wouldn't let her walk to the door. That had been an hour, and several polite requests to allow someone else to use the chair ago. Her overnight bag and vase of almost dead daisies were sat on her lap.

"You're pregnant!" she pointed out. "Where were you?"

Marshall flinched. The first few minutes he heard Mary speak each day was a new shock to him. The memory of her speech impairment seemed to fade away overnight and confronting it anew each day never failed to jar him. The fact she misused words was easy to recall if only for the amusement he derived from the puzzle it presented, but the slurring and slow delivery were hard to ignore and not in the least fun.

"I'm not late," he said as he wheeled her out into the corridor.

She twisted as far as her injury would allow to peer at him. "Pants on fire," she declared.

Marshall smiled; Mary found idiomatic speech was at times easier to recall than the word she wanted. Catherine had told her it was something to do with pattern recognition and set word order, but she shouldn't rely on it. Marshall had proven over the last few days to be capable of associating the common phrases with her usually more direct meaning and Mary was slowly becoming more aware of the words she was using.

Conscious of Mary's condition and her heightened perceptions when it came to emotions in speech, he didn't bother to deny the charge.

"I stopped for breakfast."

He neglected to mention just where he'd stopped for breakfast that morning.

"Where's mine?" Mary meant to sound put out and threatening, but even to her ear her words sounded mangled. She grimaced as she finished, at that moment not believing she'd ever fully recover control of her mouth.

"It's getting late for breakfast," he told her, "I thought we'd stop and pick up some groceries for lunch."

Mary didn't reply, just looked at the GMC in apprehension. Marshall opened the door and hovered as Mary stood slowly, taking her time to find her balance. She edged toward the vehicle and eased herself into the passenger seat. Marshall watched, his concern evident although he knew better than to say anything. He closed the door gently once Mary was comfortable and made his way to the driver's seat.

"So..." he began, "...supplies then home?"

Mary nodded, the lack of sugary breakfast forgotten as she revelled in the fact she was finally out of hospital. Marshall let her sit in relaxed silence as he made his way to the grocery store.

They pulled up outside and Marshall grabbed a cart. He handed it to Mary so she would feel useful and would have something to lean on as she followed him around the shop. Her contributions to the shopping list were of the sugar-, alcohol- and fat-containing varieties. In short; everything she had been denied while in hospital. Marshall managed to curb her worst excesses but folded on a few of her demands.

Her main demand was for a nice bottle of wine to go with the too-healthy dinner he had planned. Marshall relented after a brief discourse on the health benefits of the occasional glass of red wine. As Mary tried to point out that white wine went much better with fish, Marshall realised how much he had missed his best friend over the last few weeks.

At first he thought he had let his smirk escape and that was why Mary had gone quiet. Then he noticed her stiff posture and the way her eyes were fixed on something behind him.

He turned to see what had caught her attention. Behind him were two kids desperately trying to look 21. They weren't bothering to hide their amusement and were openly pointing at Mary and sniggering.

"Is there a problem?" he enquired.

"Is that your wife?" the first idiot asked in reply.

"Dude, that's sick! Marrying a retard," the second chimed in.

Marshall glanced at Mary, prepared to hold her back or back her play, but was surprised to find his usual services not needed as she just stood staring at the floor, her arms wrapped firmly around herself.

Marshall's anger shifted into gear and he subtly moved his jacket to reveal the gun and badge at his hip.

"Do you gentlemen have some ID?" he asked politely, steel hidden underneath his velvety tone.


	18. Chapter 18

**AN:** There's one instance of bad language in this chapter. Sorry, it couldn't be avoided.

* * *

Marshall as watched Mary withdrew from the world.

For the first two days that Mary was in his home, Marshall kept up his end of the conversation, giving her plenty of opportunity to join in if she wished. She just sat staring at the wall, or out the window, lost in her own mind. When she wasn't staring at nothing, she slept. Marshall was surprised when he came in the day after he brought her home to find her asleep on the couch in the middle of the day. He sighed as he recalled the doctors saying she would probably sleep 12-14 hours a day as her body was still healing. Marshall had pulled a throw over her and occupied himself quietly while she healed.

On day three, Mary discovered his book shelves. Picking up a book on the history of the Marshal Service, she quickly lost herself in tales of the Wild West as she found her comprehension of the written word was undiminished. Reading also had the fringe benefit of giving her something physical she could hide behind to avoid the concerned looks Marshall shot her way whenever he thought she wasn't looking.

Marshall decided to respect her need for silence and spoke to her only to ask yes/no questions that he needed an answer to. Mary would nod or shake her head as the situation demanded, but her eyes wouldn't leave the book and she still wouldn't speak to him.

Day five was when Marshall started to question whether he was doing the right thing. Mary had spent most of her time in the same sweatpants and baggy t-shirt she had been discharged in and he didn't need to touch her hair to know it was greasy. Marshall hadn't realised that while Mary had changed into her nightwear the first night there, she hadn't bothered after that, sleeping in the sweats as well. She didn't want to take her top off again and see the bandage. She didn't want to see the scar. If she didn't speak and didn't look at her injury then she could convince herself that she was okay. Just.

She spent the sixth day at Marshall's in bed. She'd chosen another book from his collection and lay there reading, for once understanding Marshall's appreciation of the pastime.

Day seven was the day Marshall decided enough was enough. It was time to bring Mary back to the world, kicking and screaming if necessary. He walked into her room unannounced and pulled the covers off of her where she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

"Get up," he said.

Mary stared at him dully.

"You've got a check-up at the hospital this morning and speech therapy this afternoon."

Mary didn't move.

"You've blown off three speech therapy sessions this week. You're not missing this one. Stan won't sign off on you returning to work if..." he trailed of as Mary mumbled something.

"What?" he snapped.

"I said, 'I don't want to go back to work,'" Mary repeated, her voice hoarse with disuse.

Marshall looked at her, astounded. The first words she'd spoken in a week were ones he'd never thought he'd hear coming out of Mary Shannon's mouth. His eyes flitted around the room as he worked through his puzzlement and shock. They alighted briefly on the book on the nightstand before he snapped his attention back to Mary.

"Bullshit!" he said. "You wouldn't be reading about the history of the Marshal Service if you truly meant to give it up, so don't give me that crap. You're still a US Marshal. And US Marshal's don't spend all day laying in bed. Where would the Service be if Ada Carnutt or Katherine Battle Gordy had stayed in bed all day? And what about Phoebe Couzins? She dedicated her life to women's suffrage so that you could follow in her footsteps and become a Marshal. Now get up and start acting like one!"

Mary didn't move, but she stared at Marshall in shock. He'd never turned his 'follow-my-orders-to-the-letter-or-I-will-shoot-you' voice on her before.

"That's an order, Inspector Shannon." He pointed at the bathroom door. "Move. Now!"

Mary found herself in the bathroom and halfway into the shower before she realised what she was doing and by then it was too late to argue with him even if she had wanted to.

xxx

Marshall was waiting for her when she came out of the speech therapy session. She slid into the seat beside him and they sat in silence for a while.

Marshall knew to wait. The drive back to his wasn't long enough for the conversation they were about to have so he just waited with the engine off.

"I got shot, Marshall," Mary admitted in a small voice.

"I know."

"I got shot and I can't remember who did it."

"No one's asking you to, Mare. Don't beat yourself up."

Mary looked puzzled. There was so much she didn't remember, so much she hadn't understood those first few days. Why didn't Marshall care about the guy who shot her? Unless...

"Did you get the guy, then? I don't remember...Or maybe you told me and I didn't understand..."

Marshall's sudden interest in his hands and avoidance of her eyes told her that she hadn't forgotten the conversation or been unable to understand it.

"I'm working on it," Marshall said tightly.

"I can't remember and even if I could, I wouldn't be able to tell anyone."

Marshall looked up at the bitterness in her tone.

"You're speaking fine, Mare."

Mary stared at him, disgust written across her face.

"Don't humor me, Marshall. I know what I sound like."

She slammed a fist against the passenger window, startling Marshall.

"God!" she yelled. "I have to concentrate so fucking hard just to get the words right! So don't lie to me and tell me everything is okay!"

As her temper frayed her control of speech, she slipped back into the gibberish that had characterized her first attempts to talk after the coma. She leant toward Marshall and poked him in the chest.

"You couldn't hide an empty glass. Boy scouts are Jinxed," she said, angrily.

The moment's hesitation and blank look on Marshall's face told her she hadn't said what she had intended. She threw herself back against the back of her seat, ignoring the stabbing pain in her back at the violent contact. Marshall let her fume for a few seconds before shifting in his seat slightly to gain her attention.

"Mare, I wasn't lying to you. You were speaking okay. Slower than normal, but much less slurred..."

"Fan-freaking-tastic!" Her anger left as quickly as it had arrived. The speech session had exhausted her and the current conversation was draining what little energy she had left. "Less slurred. Just what I was aiming for. Now I can look forward to being mistaken for a drunk for the rest of my life, rather than a retard. Perfect."

"Nobody thinks that..."

Mary shot him a look that should have flayed the very skin from his body.

"Okay, so two idiots in a grocery store did. But no one that knows you..."

"So, it's just as well I never have to work with strangers, then, isn't it?" She paused for a moment, before admitting quietly, "I don't know if I can do the job any more."

Mary stared out the passenger window so Marshall wouldn't see the tears welling in her eyes at the thought of giving up the job she loved. Marshall knew anyway.

"You don't have to decide that now. There's time. And you've made a huge improvement in just a couple of weeks. Some things can't be rushed. They'll progress in their own time. Just don't rush anything. Give it time."

By the end of his speech, Mary was staring at Marshall with an odd look on her face. The aphasia was still playing havoc with her brain. She'd understood the words he was saying to her, but the words were at odds with the delivery. There was something almost panicked about his tone. The note of desperation would normally have gone unnoticed as Mary considered the advice at face value, but to her aphasic brain the tone conveyed as much if not more information than the words themselves.

Marshall was worried about loosing her, that much was obvious.

She nodded slowly. "Okay. I won't make any itchy decisions," she said, mixing up her words as she struggled to work through the implications of Marshall's veiled meaning.

Marshall appeared satisfied by her promise, finally keying the ignition and putting the GMC into drive. A sly grin ghosted across Mary's lips as she contemplated what sort of information she could elicit with her new found super-power.

"So, what was that thing with you and Raph in the hospital last week?" she asked causally, timing her question for a moment when Marshall was concentrating in the hope of catching him off guard.

Marshall was too skilled and too accustomed to Mary's lightening-fast changes in direction to be thrown.

"What thing?"

"I saw," Mary replied, too tired to explain any further and trusting Marshall to fill in the gaps.

Marshall shrugged. "It was nothing."

_Lie_, Mary thought, never having had such an easy time reading her partner before.

"We exchanged some words while you were..." he couldn't finish the sentence as the guilt washed over him.

Mary watched him carefully. It didn't take her super-powers to see he was visibly upset at the recall of her being in a coma. But her super-powers did reveal the flash of anger at the recollection.

"Words?" she prompted.

"Yeah, tempers were high. Neither of us had slept and we were both sick with worry."

_True_.

"I said some things...that should have been left unsaid."

_Evasion and partial truth_.

"You said, or he said?"

Marshall glanced over at her.

"Things were said," he admitted, wondering why he had been about to take the blame for all the vicious things said that night. Did his desire to protect Mary include having to shield her when her fiancé was being an ass?

Mary saw the way Marshall's eyes narrowed for a split second and the wave of tension that past through his body before he got control of himself.

"You don't like him!" Mary declared, almost happily. Her tiredness was forgotten for a moment as she put together the pieces of the Marshall-shaped puzzle before her.

His lack of reaction to her statement was confirmation enough.

"You've never liked him," she reasoned, knowing it was true even as she wondered why he had never said anything to her.

Marshall read her thoughts and shrugged. "You like him. That's enough."

_True. _

At the back of Mary's mind the seed of an idea was planted: Marshall was skilled at meaning all the words he said, but he didn't say all the words he meant.


	19. Chapter 19

Mary put the book down on her lap and stared into space for a while. Marshall looked up at the movement, but seeing Mary lost in thought, returned to his own book.

The week since the conversation in the car had past quickly. Mary's speech therapy had taken up most of her days, leaving Marshall free for his daily, unpredictable visits to Lala. In the evenings, Mary insisted on them having a conversation while they ate dinner so she could get an independent assessment of her progress. She had decided her new speech therapist was far too positive and inclined to praise to be trusted. But she knew her job which was why Mary tolerated her.

Marshall gave her feedback each evening, surprised not only by Mary's progress but her dedication and perseverance. When he asked her about her sudden change of heart, she told him that she had seen her career flash before her eyes that afternoon in the car and wasn't prepared to give it up without a fight.

Marshall had finally relaxed. That was the final bit of proof he had needed to assure him that he hadn't lost his Mary to the still unidentified gang-member's gun and the brain damage it had caused. With that evidence in hand, he had allowed himself to enjoy Mary's presence in his home in the evenings. Somehow they had fallen into the routine of reading together once they had cleared up the dinner things. Sometimes one of them would be on the internet, looking for something or just killing time, but this evening they both had settled down with a book in hand.

Mary had devoured several books on American history and the inception of the various branches of law enforcement, reading bits out loud to him occasionally. He was surprised at how easily she had become an avid reader. But right then she was oblivious to the book before her.

After a few minutes, Mary broke the companionable silence. "I think I should go home soon."

Marshall looked up. He had known this day would come, but didn't hide his disappointment at her announcement.

"And I'm going to see Stan tomorrow after therapy to see about going back to work."

"Okay," Marshall agreed. "Do you want me to drive you?"

Mary shook her head. "I'll call Brandi. She can make herself useful for once," she said with a grin.

"Ah," Marshall sighed, "All those years of you driving her around will suddenly come back to haunt her, I feel."

Mary grinned.

xxx

Marshall rang the doorbell and waited impatiently for the door to open. He only had so much time before he had to get back to work and he had no idea when Mary would be getting back now he was no longer her personal chauffeur.

Raph opened the door and didn't conceal his surprise at seeing Marshall.

"Mary's not here," he said, surprised Marshall didn't know.

"I know. I'm not here for her."

Raph looked wary and didn't invite Marshall in. Marshall sighed and cursed his lack of time.

"I have something for Mary. A welcome home present. I know you've been getting the house ready for when she comes back and I'd like this to be here." He gestured to the item propped up against the wall.

"What is it?" Raph asked, still suspicious.

"It's a framed poster. I thought I could hang it somewhere..."

Raph resisted the urge to tell him exactly where he could hang it and let the door fall open wider as he made his way back into the house. The change in the interior was stunning and Marshall had to acknowledge the amount of work, effort and time Raph must have spent on it.

Raph reclaimed his paintbrush and sullenly resumed painting. "What poster?" he asked.

"It's of some of the early women Marshals," Marshall replied still admiring the room.

"Don't put it in here!" Raph said sharply. "I don't think Jinx will want to see it," he explained, adding under his breath, "and I know I don't."

"Where should I put it then?"

Raph gestured over his shoulder. "The office."

Marshall nodded and headed in the direction Raph had indicated. He gazed around the office, choosing a wall to hang the poster on and thinking that Mary truly was in for a surprise. He hadn't expected Raph to invest so much into repairing the house when he had initially contacted the FBI about compensation.

Still awed, he hung the picture and moved back into the den. Raph was still painting the woodwork. Marshall lingered a few moments more, wondering if he should say something, or offer to help, even though it was obvious Raph was trying his best to ignore him in the hope he would leave.

"So, how are things?" he asked, using the standard question he used on his witnesses. "You seem a lot calmer than last time I saw you..."

Raph put down the paintbrush and stood, wiping his hands on a rag as he faced Marshall. He regarded him a long moment before he spoke.

"I may not be as smart as you, Marshall, but I know the one thing you don't seem to."

"Really? What's that?" Marshall asked, curiosity piqued.

"That no matter how much you love Mary, it doesn't matter." Raph paused to drive home the point. "You're in a corner and there's only one way out. But you're never going to take it because you and I both know that as soon as you tell Mary how you feel, she'll run."

"I'd catch her," Marshall interjected quietly.

"Maybe," Raph allowed reluctantly. "But Mary would never forgive you for it. She'd never forgive you for ruining your friendship, so it doesn't matter if you love her. I stopped being jealous of you when I realised that. I've spent too much time being jealous of how close you are to her, how much she relies on you. I never realised that that is what traps you and protects what Mary and I have."

Raph turned back to his painting.

"That's why she's coming home to me. Why she's going to marry me. And why you can never win."

Marshall stood in the middle of the room for a couple more moments watching Raph's even brush strokes. When he had made it obvious that he was leaving on his own terms and not because Raph had dismissed him, he turned and left.

xxx

Mary met Stan at a coffee shop near the courthouse. With Brandi driving her she couldn't risk her cover by going to the Sunshine Building. She saw him as soon as she walked in.

"Mary," he greeted as she sat down. "Marshall's been keeping me up to date with your progress, but I have to say it's good to see you."

Mary blushed slightly at the genuine sincerity of his words and tone. "I want to come back to work, Stan," she said, skipping the pleasantries.

"I guessed as much when you called. In fact, I kinda expected you to call sooner..."

Mary ignored his implied question. "So I can come back, then?"

"Whoa, hold your horses there, Inspector, I didn't say that."

Mary waited, suffering under his appraising stare with more forbearance than she would have shown anyone else.

"Are you ready to come back?" Stan asked.

"Do you think I'd be here if I wasn't? I'm going crazy not working. Seriously, Stan, if Marshall hands me one more book on the Service's history, I'm going to beat him to death with it!"

"This is me you're talking to, Mary."

Mary stilled, letting the false liveliness drain out of her.

"Are you ready?" Stan asked again.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know. I know physically I'm okay. I get tired easily, but my doctor says that's lack of condition and will come back."

"But...?" Stan prompted when Mary seemed to change her mind about continuing.

Mary looked him directly in the eye as she took a deep breath and said, "I still have trouble speaking."

She waited for him to crack a joke about getting some peace and quiet in the office. He didn't.

"You sound fine to me," was all he said.

"I have to concentrate on the words I'm using to make sure they're right. It's tiring. And when I'm tired it's harder, my concentration slips occasionally. I don't know if I should be interacting with witnesses...They have enough problems, they don't need to have to try and decode what I'm saying as well."

Stan rubbed a hand across his head and considered what she was telling him.

"I could let you come back on a restricted schedule. That should stop you getting too tired. Marshall will be with you on witness visits until you're more confident to handle them on your own. How does that sound?"

Mary nodded slowly. She hated the restrictions and the implication that she couldn't deal with witnesses on her own, but she knew it was true and she had no choice. If she wanted to return to work, she would have to follow Stan's rules and take it easy for a while. And she did want to return to work. She had never not wanted to, but her confidence had taken a severe knock and she still hadn't completely regained her mental footing.

_Still_, she thought, _I have to start somewhere._

"Okay," she agreed.

"Good." Stan smiled. "That's settled, then. Now, do you remember anything else from the night you were shot?"

Mary grimaced and settled down to tell him every detail she could remember.

It didn't take long.

xxx

Two days later, Marshall drove Mary home to her welcome home party, only to have her follow him out the door 20 minutes later. Marshall had never been so glad for a witness emergency – his phone had chirped with impeccable timing, giving him something to focus on as Mary hugged Raph and declared her love of men with lists. It had also given him an excuse to escape, taking Mary with him. That had earned him a pointed look and smug grin from Raph which he chose to ignore.

They stopped at the office before visiting Jimmy. Marshall was studying the the video again as Mary came out of Stan's office.

"Look at you, with badge and gun and everything!" he teased.

"Yeah, it feels good to be back. Do you think Phoebe Couzins would approve of me now?" Mary stalked over to her desk and threw her pain meds into the top draw. She didn't really care what Couzins would have thought of her, but she knew that Marshall's answer would reflect his own opinion.

Marshall looked blank for a moment before he remembered the accusations he had used to motivate Mary. He chuckled, "Couzins probably isn't the best example I could have picked."

"Why not?"

"She died in bitter loneliness and poverty," Marshall revealed.

Mary cocked her head to one side as she considered this new information.

"So that's a yes, then?"

"That's a yes. Now, do you want to go and talk to your idiot witness, or not?"

* * *

AN: That brings us to the end of part two. I have the first few chapters of part three (Emotional) written, so we'll go straight into it next week.


	20. Chapter 20

**AN:** This is where the spoilers start coming thick and fast. I'm assuming everyone who reads FanFiction has a greater than passing familiarity with all three seasons. However, my mum is always telling me, "One should never assume." So, in case you've missed a couple of episodes or haven't seen the show for a while, this chapter is set at the end of Father Goes West.

* * *

**The Ten Stages of Awakening**

**Part 3 – Emotional**

Mary stared at herself in the mirror, slowly peeling back the bandage.

Her mind was spinning.

She had avoided looking at the wound as much as possible, but after chasing and bringing down Carmello she genuinely needed to check she hadn't pulled a stitch. She poked at it gently, intensifying the dull ache to a sudden stab of pain.

"_Gun!" she called, reaching for her weapon._

Mary squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to escape the images in her mind. When she opened them, the ugly scar stared back at her, all stitches exactly where the doctors had left them. She re-covered it quickly. She hadn't let Raph see it the previous three nights: He didn't need to see the visible reminder of her injures. Neither did she, she thought as she re-taped the bandage. Living with the non-visible injures was tough enough. It was still a struggle to communicate with constant concentration required.

She had tried to shield Raph and her family from the worst of her rehabilitation by staying with Marshall – something they still hadn't forgiven her for. But she had been determined she would put them through the least amount of stress as possible until she was confident she would recover.

Hiding her scar and bandage from Raph had just been a natural extension of that. She knew just how much of a jarring reminder a visible scar could be.

"_What's that?"_

"_What?"_

"_Under your shirt, there?"_

_Marshall looked to where she was pointing then stared back at her, not believing she had forgotten._

"_That's where I was shot."_

"_Oh." _

_Mary kicked herself. She hadn't forgotten just how close she had come to losing him that day – and not just to the bullet – but, like all things, the urgency and intensity of the emotions had faded with time. She'd managed to put it behind her until that chance glimpse of his scar brought it all back._

She didn't want Raph to see her scar for the very same reason. They were hanging on by a thread at the moment and she was scared it would only take the slightest thing for him to leave. So she concentrated when she spoke, hid her scars and avoided any reminder of the shooting or her stay with Marshall. Raph had looked so broken when she had agreed to stay with Marshall, but he hadn't understood her reasons and hadn't taken the time to find out. That impatience had reassured her she was making the right decision – Raph wouldn't be able to cope with her as she recovered. If she recovered _–_ she'd had her doubts.

The night before, she had at least been partially reassured that she would recover.

"_Marshall!" she called, relieved the voice echoing in her ears sounded clear if less steady than normal as she kept her gun trained on Jimmy and waited the requisite three heartbeats for Marshall to appear._

She had been relieved when the adrenaline had kicked in and sharpened her mind: It could have gone the other way so easily. She could have found the natural stimulant clouded her mind the way tiredness and emotional exhaustion did. But it hadn't.

She hoped that her steadiness under pressure was a sign that her aphasia was fading. She'd miss the ability to read people, but she'd been able to do that before and was sure that she could again. Of course it wouldn't be as easy as it had been tonight. She had only needed to look at Jimmy to see his intentions written clearly in his expression and posture. Marshall had trusted her assessment. He'd been on the receiving end of too many probing questions since she'd discovered her super-power to doubt her ability to read her witness. Not that he had ever doubted her in the past, she reminded herself, but it was reassuring to know he still trusted her.

No matter how much Marshall articulated that he believed she could still do the job, there had been that element of doubt. However, tonight she felt she had proved, to herself and any other doubters, that she was still capable even if, once the adrenaline had worn off, she had struggled to speak. Marshall had done most of the talking at the hospital, but she had been able to convey her message when she had needed to and now she clung to that.

That and Marshall.

Marshall, who always knew what she needed. Marshall, who was learning quickly when to take over the talking from her and when to leave her to it. Marshall, the one person who wasn't treating her like an invalid, who trusted her to know her own limits. Marshall, who listened to what she said, understood the things she didn't say and ignored the things she wished she hadn't said.

"_Respect? When have you ever shown me respect? Or anyone else for that matter."_

"_Maybe you'd get respect if you ever actually did something to earn it," she shot back._

"_And you wonder why I didn't share my future plans with you..."_

Even now, Mary cringed in remembrance of the words. The were undeserved and they both knew it. Yet she had said it anyway, wanting to hurt him as much as finding out about his secret interview had hurt her. No wonder he'd been thinking about leaving – she couldn't even acknowledge a truth that had existed from the first few months of their partnership.

_They were in Hot Springs, Arkansas, picking up a corrupt cop who had a last minute change of heart. Tempers were running high in the local police department. There had never been any hint of corruption in that precinct before and people that had previously trusted their new witness were feeling burnt. Not to mention the local criminal gang that was just waiting for an opportunity to remove the weakest link in their organisation._

_Sitting in one of the interview rooms at the station, Steve finished giving his statement just as Mary and Marshall walked in. Mary took point. She was finally familiar enough with WITSEC protocol for Marshall to take a step back and watch his new partner work. He leant near the door as Mary sat opposite Steve and started to read him the riot act._

_Mary was halfway through explaining the deal available to Steve, when the door flew open and Steve's enraged partner stormed in._

_Mary was out her seat and reaching for her weapon in an instant. She rated her reflexes as quick with no false modesty; a lifetime of watching and waiting for the next attack, be it physical, verbal or emotional, had her constantly alert and quick to react. _

_She knew she was fast __–__ but Marshall was faster. _

_Before her hand was even halfway to her holster, Marshall had Steve's would-be attacker pinned in a wrist lock that looked effortless on Marshall's part but very painful for anyone on the receiving end._

_Steve's partner, Hutchins, danced on his toes as he tried to relieve the pressure on his wrist. Marshall's face remained impassive as he slammed Hutchins into the wall with sufficient force, precision and control to tell Mary that he was secretly enjoying himself._

Mary's sudden insight into her seemingly unassuming partner had left her staring at the man with a new-found level of respect.

Little did she know, then, that she would come to love watching her partner work. The wrist locks and restraints that she had had no patience for at the academy, convinced they wouldn't work in the field, came to symbolized everything her partner did and was. Precise, controlled, powerful enough to hurt, yet gentle enough not to injure. He applied them with effortlessness and grace and Mary relaxed her guard around him slightly, reassured that he could take care of himself if he had to.

A few months after that, a well placed shot would convince her that he could also take care of her and their witnesses. She would call the shot 'freakish' to his face, just to see his cocky grin, but afterwards she would stop cursing the three heartbeat delay that she had to suffer through as her partner traded speed for accuracy and thoroughness.

Three years after that, there was the same three-beat pause as Marshall pulled himself off the ground to emerge, guns blazing, with his usual impeccable timing.

"_Mare?"_

"_Yeah?" she snapped out of her trance at the sound of his voice._

"_You okay?"_

"_Yeah, fine," she tried to brush him off. She didn't want him to see how shaken she was at seeing his scar and remembering that day._

_It didn't work. Marshall moved towards her and stood in front of her._

"_It's okay, Mare. I'm okay. Look."_

_He pulled his undershirt off and waited until she looked at him._

"_See. Not dead, not bleeding and fully healed."_

"_It looks sore," she noted, not being able to peel her eyes away from the angry red scar on his shoulder._

"_It's stiff, sometimes, but it doesn't hurt. Here." _

_He grabbed her hand and placed it over the scar._

_She traced the line, skimming her fingers over the reddened skin._

"_Are you sure it doesn't hurt?" she asked when she felt him flinch slightly under her touch._

"_Not at all."_

That touch had healed her in ways she hadn't realised she needed healing. The only time she had properly seen his wound was when she was shoving a tube into it and praying that his knowledge wasn't all academic. Seeing it again gave her a measure of relief and an image of health to replace the previous one.

As she turned the bathroom light off and walked into her bedroom, she wondered if she could do the same thing for Raph. Would letting him see the scar help mend their fragile relationship? Would it at least shut him up long enough for her to get the break she so desperately needed?

Deciding it couldn't hurt to try, Mary smiled at Raph as he lay in bed.

She slipped her top over her head as she moved toward him.


	21. Chapter 21

**AN:** Spoilers for/tie-in with When Mary Met Marshall.

Many thanks to Roar for beta-ing this chapter. I've rewritten a couple of sections since, so any mistakes that remain are solely my own.

* * *

Mary swore quietly as she hung up the phone.

The call from Marshall had held so much potential. He could so easily have been calling to tell her one of her witnesses was dead, there'd been a major security breach or that they were being sent somewhere on short notice. Anything to get the adrenaline flowing.

Her life had been routinely dull for the last couple of weeks. She was actually starting to miss Eleanor. She hadn't had a decent fight since before she was shot, and that had been with Marshall and not of the fun variety. Raph had been tiptoeing around her since she got home, but they hadn't actually fought. She had spent so long longing for a break from all the conflict and turmoil in her life, but once she actually had peace for a short space of time, she found she got bored.

So, when Marshall had called, she had been hoping for some action. She longed for the rush, the sharpening of the mind and the chance to forget for a while that she had been shot – something she was reminded of every time she looked in Raph's eyes. Instead she got a break-in at Mr and Mrs Happy Kitty's house. Just what she needed. The perfect couple, with their hair stroking and constant smiles. The perfect picture of what her life was in danger of becoming.

She cursed her luck. She cursed Marshall for dragging her into a mess with _his_ stupid witnesses. Then, she cursed the idiot that had broken into their stupid house on her afternoon off. And then, she cursed the fact that she still needed to take afternoons off or risk turning into a gibbering fool in the evening.

She was still cursing - she'd reached Carmello for shooting her in the first place - when she pulled up outside the Sunshine Building and Marshall slipped into the car. Once she had a receptive audience, she started again; out loud.

Her mood improved when she saw all was not well in Happy Kitty Land. The sight of the usually happy couple arguing balanced out her universe, providing discord where calmness usually reigned, the perfect counterbalance to her too-peaceful life.

As always when she saw Henry and Claudia, her mind turned to the start of hers and Marshall's relationship.

xxx

_She'd been in Albuquerque for three weeks when she came to her senses. She blamed the air – it was doing something to her mind like a weird, free-to-inhale drug that she just couldn't get enough of._

_The first couple of weeks had been fun, teasing Marshal Marshall – that would never get old - as he took her on witness visits and explained procedure to her in his prissy way. He had taken it in stride, answering her back occasionally and just putting up with her more than anyone else had up to that point._

_But his patience had obviously run out. He'd been distant all week and now he had been completely absent for the last two days. Mary had tried to ask Stan where he was, but his cagey answer left her confused and wondering if she had driven another person away._

_It was late at night and Mary sat contemplating her dilemma. Should she go pick her car up from the parking facility in Baltimore where she'd left it and try to get back on the Carson Miller pursuit? She could find a way back onto the team, she was sure. But did she even want to go back to living out of her Probe? At least that never let her down. Or should she go pick up her car and bring it back to Albuquerque and find somewhere more permanent than the crappy motel she'd been staying in? What did she care about the stupid challenge Marshall had thrown at her anyway?_

_As she mulled over her options, the door to the office suddenly swung open and Marshall strode in._

"_Is Stan here?" he demanded._

_Mary shook her head._

_Marshall paced round the room a few times, the tension radiating off him. On one of his laps, Mary caught his attention. A sly grin crept into his eyes and he perched on the edge of her desk._

"_So," he drawled, "How are you liking Albuquerque?"_

_Mary recognised the opening as a prelude to being hit on._

"_Oh, you know, it's fine if you don't mind living miles from civilisation, in the middle of the freaking desert, with no decent bars. Seriously, are all the bars here occupied by small-minded locals, obsessed with guns and the wild west? I'm including the local PD, by the way, who seem to spend all their time playing cowboys and Indians with the locals," she said, clearly including him in her generalisation. _

"_Aren't you having any fun?"_

"_I've having plenty of 'fun'," she bristled at the implied criticism. "Are you?"_

"_Not enough. Come on."_

"_Where?"_

"_Nope, no questions. Just get your coat, we're going out."_

_xxx_

_Marshall took her to a bar in a part of the Old Town that she would never have found by herself. The atmosphere was lively, but not so loud that you couldn't have a conversation. Marshall led the way to the bar and ordered two shots and two beers. He downed his shot before she had even picked hers up._

_Normally, Mary would have seen that as a challenge for her to keep up, but something in the way he was bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited for a refill told her he was temporarily oblivious to her presence._

"_Tough day?" she asked when he'd downed the second shot and started on the beer._

_Marshall shot her a look._

"_No questions," he said._

"_Fine." Mary sipped her beer as she looked around the bar. _

_They sat silently at the bar and drank their beers. Marshall relaxed slightly – the first two shots had taken the edge off and he was now enjoying his beer at a more leisurely pace. He was no longer thrumming with excess energy. He gazed around the room noticed the pool table standing empty at the other end of the room._

"_Wanna play?" he asked, nodding toward the table._

"_Actually, since you've been such scintillating company so far, I thought I'd just head home." Mary stood and drained her bottle to emphasise her point._

_Marshall grabbed her as she went to leave._

"_I'm sorry. I've had a crap couple of days. Come on. One game."_

_Mary stared at him a moment, trying to work him out. _

"_Okay, but the no questions rule has to go."_

_Marshall nodded, "I can go one better than that. Do you want to make it interesting?"_

_Mary followed him to the table, asking, "Interesting how?"_

_Marshall grinned._

"_Answer per ball?"_

"_Huh?"_

"_For every ball that's potted, you have to answer a question."_

"_You're on."_

_xxx_

"_Why'd you want to come out tonight?" Mary asked as she stood up from breaking to watch two balls sail into pockets._

"_Crap week."_

"_That's a lame answer. Especially as it was a two ball question!" _

_Marshall smiled sadly as he realised she was right; she did deserve a better answer. "One of my witnesses died. Was murdered, actually."_

_Mary didn't look up from the shot she was taking, although she tensed slightly. Another ball dropped into a pocket. "Security breach?"_

"_No, it was unrelated to their past. It was too unprofessional to be a hit. And it was the witness' wife. If you can get close enough for that kind of hit, why not just take him out?"_

"_True." Mary lined up her next shot. "Did you catch the guy?"_

"_Yeah," Marshall sighed. The weariness in his voice made Mary look up and she missed her next shot. As she handed over the one cue they had found that wasn't warped, she took a moment to study her partner._

"_It was the husband, wasn't it?"_

_Marshall didn't answer as he bent to take his shot. He struck the cue ball firmly and watched it collide with the four ball, change direction and glance off the seven that had been hovering near the middle pocket. He didn't ask his question straight away, taking another shot first. Only when the four had also been removed from the table did he turn back to Mary._

"_Why is that your first assumption?"_

"_It's always the husband."_

"_He had an alibi," Marshall told her. Mary didn't look convinced, so Marshall continued, "He was picking their twelve year old son up from school at the time. He drove them to a sporting goods store and bought Jonny a new pair of sneakers. There was a time stamp on the receipt. Do you still suspect him?"_

_Mary went to answer then realised that he was testing her. She gave the question a few more seconds thought but didn't change her answer._

"_Yeah. I bet that was the first time he'd picked his son up in years."_

_Marshall nodded and turned back to the table. The six ball flew into the pocket with more force than was necessary. "He still had an alibi for the time of death."_

"_They're never accurate," Mary dismissed Marshall's logic, knowing that her instinct was right._

_Marshall potted the nine off the eight and gestured for Mary to rack up the next frame._

"_You're right. It wasn't accurate enough." Marshall drained his beer and went to the bar to get another round. _

_When he returned, Mary was getting ready to break again. _

"_Why are you so cut up about this?" she asked once she'd sunk a couple of balls. The lightning speed of the question and answer session was slowly fading as the questions got more serious and more personal than those in the first few frames._

"_He killed his wife, then went and picked his son up from school to give himself an alibi. He let his son walk in on his mother's body to move suspicion away from himself. What sort of parent does that?"_

_Mary had no answer. She potted another ball and asked, "What's going to happen to him?"_

"_He's already back in Chicago and the knife with his fingerprints on is with the local DA."_

"_I meant what's going to happen to the kid?"_

"_He's with his aunt and uncle. Beyond that, I don't know." Marshall took a couple more sips of his beer, watching Mary play as he struggled with the question that had been plaguing him since he had tracked down the murder weapon. "Do you think someone can recover from that sort of thing? From knowing that, not only was your dad a criminal, but he also killed your mom?"_

_Mary ignored the fact that Marshall hadn't potted anything as it was still her turn and answered anyway._

"_I don't think that's the sort of thing you ever get over. But that doesn't mean that you don't have good days where life is normal and you can forget for a while just how screwed up your family is."_

_Marshall took the cue from Mary as she fouled her next shot and asked, "How'd you know so much about this?"_

"_Experience."_

_Marshall paused before taking his shot. "Oh, yes, I forgot about your family. Sorry." He took his shot and potted the ball without much thought – his mind was still on Mary and her...unusual...family situation. She hadn't mentioned them since arriving in Albuquerque. That alone was enough to make him curious._

"_What made you tell me about your family...er...business? It doesn't seem like something you'd share when you first meet people."_

_Mary shrugged as she watched him line up the next shot. "I tell everyone that. You were just the first to take me seriously." She took a swig of her beer. "Everyone else assumed I was joking."_

"_Ah, thank you Freud," Marshall said as he watched a ball disappear into the corner pocket. _

"_Nice shot," Mary acknowledged._

"_Thanks."_

_Marshall lined up another shot. Mary waited nervously; she knew just were the conversation was headed next. She closed her eyes as she heard the tell-tale thunk of a ball dropping into the pocket. Marshall didn't disappoint._

"_How old were you when your dad left?"_

"_Six." She took another swallow of beer for liquid courage. "He left two days before my seventh birthday."_

"_Do you miss him?" Marshall was careful to keep his eyes on the table as he asked his questions. Something told him that if he gave Mary any excuse to avoid this conversation, she would, and that included him missing a shot or looking at her in the wrong way._

"_Yeah, I miss him," she exhaled, surprisingly relieved to finally admit it to someone. "Some days it's just there in the background. We lived so long without him, it's hard to remember those days what it was like when he was there. But other days, there's this huge hole in my life and nothing I do can fill it."_

"_Have you tried to find him?"_

_Mary shook her head. As she did so, her hair fell out of the hairband she'd loosely tied it back with at the start of the game._

"_Why not?" Marshall asked as he bent to line up what should have been the final shot of the match. He took his time, not wanting to miss and give Mary a chance to avoid the question. Taking his time proved to be fatal. To see what was taking so long, Mary moved round the table slightly, hovering at the edge of Marshall's vision. As Marshall drew the cue back to take the shot, Mary reached up to tie her hair back. The motion of her arms above her head, made her top ride up just enough to expose a pale line of flesh above the waistband of her jeans, right at Marshall's eye height._

_It was too late, Marshall had already struck the cue ball. He watched the white sail past the nine ball and disappear into the corner pocket._

_Mary smirked in triumph._

"_Four – six," she pointed out, quite unnecessarily._

xxx

Mary smiled as she recalled that night. She hadn't let him live down his defeat for months afterwards. It would have been longer if she had known what had distracted him at the crucial moment, but he never told her.

It would take her another 18 months before she trusted him enough to tell him any of the many reasons why she hadn't tried to find her dad, but something about the conversation that night stuck in her mind and would surface every time she contemplated leaving Albuquerque.

Seeing Marshall's pain and confusion at the idea that someone could use their child that way had struck a cord in Mary.

She couldn't leave after that. Marshall needed her, even if he didn't know it. He needed her to stop him getting lost in his naive world where everything was sunshine, laughter and worked out for the best. He needed her to guide him back down to Earth safely, rather than letting him plummet in freefall when his world and the real world collided. He was too sensitive, he needed to build up some callouses to protect him from life. His perfect world needed some confusion and she and her all-too-messy life could provide that in spades.

Now, just over six years later, he had built up a tougher exterior, but his sensitivity remained underneath. Mary had long since stopped trying to remove it completely. She had learnt to see its, and his, value and worked hard to protect him from some of the more brutal truths of life, the way she had with Brandi as a child.

He, in turn, had shone a light on some of the more fun and positive things in life, showing her the world wasn't as bad as she thought it was. He had given her a way to reconnect to people at a time when she thought she was beyond hope. She had mellowed and given humanity a second chance. So far, he had yet to let her down. When everything around her seemed to crumble, he would be there, right next to her, pointing out the beauty to be found in the ruins or explaining why it was entropically inevitable and she shouldn't blame herself.

He'd been challenging her deepest held self-beliefs from day one. Sometimes it was outright, laying down the gauntlet and standing back to see if she would pick it up. Most of the time, though, it was simply his unending belief in people that forced her to look at the world anew, through less jaded eyes.

When outsiders asked how she and Marshall had met, or when they started working together, Mary would reply with a tale of a FTF manhunt and three-day transport from hell. But if Marshall was there, they would share a secret smile, a look, a subtle movement that would go unnoticed by the questioner, but that would acknowledge the truth between them. For they may have started working together after moving Henry and Claudia, but their true partnership had begun that night in the bar.

The following day, Marshall had strolled into the office and pulled a file out of his filing cabinet. He had thrown it causally at her and told her not to let anyone get killed. He had still accompanied her on her first visit to Scott and Chris Worley, but mostly to introduce her as their new Marshal. A couple of months later, he had let her take point on welcoming their newest witness into the program.

Mary hated to admit it, but Marshall had made a good instructor. He ignored several of the training procedures when he realised her experience was far superior to the fictional Marshal in the manual. Yet he didn't give her free reign to wreak havoc on witnesses, as she could now admit she probably would have done.

His current supervision of her rankled, but she understood the necessity of it. He knew her better now, so he let her carry on as she would normally, only stepping in when he sensed she was approaching the edge. She had been grateful for his intervention a couple of times on regular witness visits. The first had been, coincidently, with Scott and Chris. She had been demanding answers about Chris' gambling, when a sudden wave of longing for her dad had passed over her. Her concentration had slipped and, from the confused expressions, she had said something incomprehensible.

Marshall had stepped in, with his, "What I believe my impatient friend means, is..." and the conversation had continued without anyone commenting on her lapse.

Similar lapses had occurred when she was tired, mostly in and around the office but a couple of times at home as well. In the office, Marshall and Stan had just laughed at her, not unkindly, until she demanded to know what she had actually said. Marshall had told her each time and she had laughed with them. At home, there was no laughter when she substituted words, just looks of horror and despair. The welling tears in her mom's eyes and the pitying look from Raph only strengthened her desire to get better.

She wanted her aphasia gone so she could go back to normal. She wanted her independence back. She didn't want to have Marshall supervise her. She didn't want to be tiptoed around at home. She didn't want to be the subject of concerned glances. She didn't want to walk into a room only to have a conversation suddenly stop.

Raph's acceptance of her scar had led her to believe he would be able to cope with mental injury as well, so she had increased her hours at work. The longer hours meant she was more tired when she got home and more likely to slip an incorrect word into a sentence. The first time, Raph was understandably shocked - he hadn't had to face that side of her injury until then. But his dismay hadn't faded with repetition and she was back to concentrating on her speech all the time at home.

That made her more likely to slip at work, where she didn't care what Marshall thought. That had the side effect of making Marshall think her aphasia was worse than it was and so he still insisted on accompanying her on witness assignments, which included dragging her along on his.

Mary started her litany of curses again as they drove back to the office to check the Carson Miller angle of the break in. At least if Miller was involved, she might get to see some action, might get to prove to Marshall that she was okay and might get to finally catch that bastard after he had eluded her almost seven years ago.


	22. Chapter 22

"Where have you been?" Marshall asked as Mary strolled into the office.

"The hospital."

"Everything okay?" he asked, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.

"Coma Guy woke up," Mary said as she grabbed her messages off her desk and leafed through them.

Marshall stared at her a moment, trying to translate Aphasic Mary into Normal Mary.

"Wade Trimble?" Mary said, glancing over and seeing Marshall's puzzled look. She smiled as she watched enlightenment dawn on her partner's face.

"Does that mean you'll stop calling him Coma Guy now?" Marshall reprimanded jokingly.

Mary ignored him. Marshall could tell by the way she slowed her perusal of the notes in her hand that her mind was on other things. He stood and walked over to Mary's desk, perching on the edge as he waited for her to share whatever was on her mind.

"Wade remembers everything," Mary told him, eyes still on her messages. She paused for a moment before putting the papers down and leaning on the desk to face Marshall. "He woke up, completely coherent and able to remember everything. He didn't even hesitate when I asked him who shot him."

Mary sounded perplexed at this outcome.

"So?" Marshall prompted.

"I don't know. You'd just think that...that after three years...he'd..."

"He'd be more messed up?" Marshall suggested.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Every brain is different, Mare. Plus, you suffered anoxic brain injury. That's what did the damage."

"I know." She sighed, resigned. "It just doesn't seem fair. He gets shot, spends three years asleep and wakes up ready to get on with his life. And I...I..." Mary couldn't finish the sentence.

"Life's not fair, Mary," Marshall said sadly.

"Don't you think I know that? I'm just waiting for it to cut me a break for a change. Seriously, Marshall, isn't it supposed to get easier at some point?"

Marshall knew anything he said in response to Mary's plea for a break would sound trite, so he said nothing.

Mary looked at him for a long while, before sighing in resignation at the hand that life had dealt her.

"I should get back to Wade," she said.

"Do you want me to come?" Marshall offered, still aware of how recently Mary had been unable to string a sentence together.

Her lapses were less frequent now, but there were still words she struggled with and her lapses, when they did occur, were unpredictable. He didn't want to insinuate that she wasn't ready to handle witnesses on her own, but he did want her to know that he was there for her if she wanted.

Mary shook her head. "Of all my witnesses, Wade should be the one I have the least trouble relating to. Even if I do want to beat him with his cane to show him how lightly he got off," she added as she retrieved her bag.

"Yeah, that'll show him," Marshall called as Mary stalked out the office.

Mary was aware that Marshall was watching her leave.

_Checking out my ass_, she mentally corrected.

She shot him a grin as she waited for the elevator doors to open. He blushed slightly at being caught.

xxx

Mary had a noticeable spring in her step when she stepped off the elevator. She strolled to her car with a swagger that had been absent for some time and as she pulled the car door closed behind her, not even the stiffness she felt in her abdomen could dampen her mood.

It seemed breaks, for her, only came in small pieces. Her life was still the mess it always had been, thrown into stark contrast by Wade's swift recovery from his coma, but Marshall had provided her with the relief she needed for a few minutes with his understanding.

For the time it had taken her to get from the office to the car, all was right with the world. She'd finally been cleared to drive. She was going to pick a witness up on her own. Life with Raph was good and she'd just caught Marshall checking out her ass. She felt good and she felt sexy.

She keyed the engine.

The Probe choked and spluttered but showed no real signs of life. She leant her head back against the headrest and muttered a curse. So much for her good mood.

xxx

"_You're late," Marshall noted mildly._

"_Bite me," Mary snapped._

"_Well, I was going to ask why, but I think I'll wait for the mood to wear off." Marshall turned to his desk calendar. "How does 2014 suit you? Shall I pencil it in? Or is ten years not long enough for you to get over whatever is bugging you today?"_

_Mary glared at him._

"_Seriously, Mare, we were starting to worry," he said mildly._

"_Don't call me that."_

"_What? Mare?"_

_Mary answered his question with a look that spoke volumes._

"_Why not?" he asked._

"_It's not my name. I hate nicknames. They're supposed to be cutsie and sweet, but they're annoying. I had to sit next to a couple on the bus that couldn't stop calling each other Snuggles and Cherrypop. It's pathetic. And you _know_ he's only calling her that so he doesn't have to remember the name of the woman he's doing behind her back. But she's too dumb to realize. Seriously, the instant a guy starts calling me Baby or Honey, his ass is out the door. And don't think that doesn't apply to you!"_

"_But it's such a hassle to say your whole name," Marshall whined jokingly. "That extra -y on the end is such mouthful."_

"_Well, man up and get used to it," Mary snapped._

_Marshall had noticed over the last year of working with Mary that she would rail on a small detail when she was in a bad mood, but the subject that she was most venomous and vocal about, wasn't necessarily what she was upset or angry about. Some days he wouldn't dig deeper, allowing Mary to tell him what was really wrong when she was ready. Those days, he would play along. He would pretend that the greatest problem Mary had was the stop lights that were out to get her and would explain why this wasn't so and how the algorithms for traffic flow worked. Or he would agree that the woman in the coffee place was stupid and incompetent and let Mary rant and plot about how she was going to get her fired, adding the occasional suggestion of his own._

_But sometimes, there would be a hint of what was really troubling her in her tirade and this was one of those days._

_Marshall nodded in response to Mary's demand, letting her think she had won. He waited for her to sit down and power on her computer before asking causally, "Why were you on the bus, anyway?"_

"_My car wouldn't start."_

_She waited for him to make some snide remark about what a clapped-out piece of junk her car was. When he didn't, she glanced over at him._

"_Why didn't you call me?" he asked._

_Mary shrugged. "Are you a mechanic?"_

"_What's that...?"_

"_Why do men automatically assume they can fix cars?" Mary cut Marshall off. "It's like you think that just because you have a penis, you are also born with complete knowledge of the internal combustion engine, even if you've never popped the hood. Do you even know where the thing is to open the hood?"_

"_I just meant, I would have come and picked you up." Marshall ignored her question. "You could have called me rather than take the bus."_

_Mary looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face. It genuinely hadn't occurred to her to call Marshall and have him pick her up. She was so used to getting by on her own; the idea of calling for help was foreign to her._

"_Why?" she asked after a moment._

_It was Marshall's turn to look puzzled. "That's what friends do," he told her._

_Mary thought a few moments longer, the puzzled expression not going anywhere._

"_Are we friends then?"_

_Marshall was surprised she had to ask and it showed clearly on his face. "I'd like to think so," he said, wondering if and why she thought otherwise. "Don't you?"_

_Mary turned to her computer screen, clearly signalling the conversation was over._

xxx

_Mary was slightly subdued for the rest of that day as she worked through the implications of having a friend. _

_If Marshall noticed, he knew her well enough not to mention it._

_The following day, Mary left her apartment and was about to stroll down the road to the bus stop, when she spotted her partner leaning against his truck on the other side of the road. She changed direction and headed towards him. He noticed her as she dodged between a couple of slow moving cars._

_She stopped several feet from him. They regarded each other silently for several seconds. The implied offer hung in the air. _

_Mary looked Marshall in the eye and tried to see what his ulterior motive was. She failed to spot anything other than his genuine offer of help. He only wanted to make her life easier. Mary had never had anyone offer to help her without wanting something in return and as she regarded him, she realised Marshall was no different. Something in his eyes told her that by getting in the car she wouldn't just be accepting a ride, but also his offer of friendship. That was what he was asking – that she acknowledge they were friends._

_Finally, she straightened her shoulders, gave Marshall the barest of nods and walked round the truck to get in the passenger side. Marshall pulled the driver's door open and slid in with a private smile on his face._

xxx

Mary couldn't help but smile as she traipsed back up to the office. The first time her car hadn't started she felt like she had been betrayed by a close friend. Not just a close friend, but the only friend she had. At least, that's what she had thought at the time, but it turned out that as she was being let down by her car, another friend was ready to take its place.

As her Probe started to make her life increasingly difficult, Marshall had stepped up and taken some of the difficulties away. He helped where he could, where she would let him, and in ways that she didn't always notice at the time. Little by little, over the years, Marshall had been making her life easier in as many small ways as he could.

Her question from a few minutes ago came back to her: _"Isn't it supposed to get easier at some point?"_

Without her realising, life had got easier since Marshall had become a part of it. She spent so much time and energy digging her way out from the pile of crap that she was buried under that she didn't always notice the person digging her out from the other side. But every once in a while, she would catch a glimpse of her rescuer or hear the sound of shovelling and be reminded that she wasn't alone in her struggle.

Perhaps Marshall was her reward for putting up with all the crap in her life, she thought as the elevator doors slid open.

She stomped into the office and stopped next to the mildly surprise Marshall.

"Give me your keys," she demanded, holding her hand out for them.

Marshall handed them to her without comment and turned back to what he was doing.

Mary stood there a moment looking at the keys in her hand. When had she got so comfortable accepting help from this man, when she fought tooth and nail against anyone else that even offered?

Marshall looked up again, wondering why she was still standing there. He watched her as he tried to work out what was going through her mind.

Finally, he had to ask, "You okay?"

Mary looked up sharply. "Yeah," she said with a smile.

Gripped by a sudden impulse, Mary walked around Marshall's desk so she stood next to him. Before he could overcome his puzzlement, she placed her hand on his shoulder, leant down and kissed him on the cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered, sincerely, in his ear. "I don't know what I would do without you."

She was gone, out of the office and halfway across town, before Marshall could work out what had just happened.


	23. Chapter 23

Marshall lay on the bed in his Denver hotel room. He knew he should be going over case notes, or at least thinking about ways to persuade Earl to enter WITSEC, but he couldn't stop thinking about Mary's empty ring finger.

How he had spotted it so quickly, he didn't know. It wasn't like he checked for its presence everyday. Or then again, maybe he did and he just hadn't realised he was doing it. His thoughts were interrupted by a banging on his door.

"Marshall, open up," Mary called through the thin wood.

He swung his legs off the bed and crossed the room in a couple of strides. He opened the door and let Mary in.

"Thanks," she muttered as she walked past him. "There are no bears in my room."

Marshall had noticed a subtle change in Mary's aphasia over the last few months. There was no change in the confusion it wrought, but its occurrences had become less frequent and what triggered them had changed. She was no longer prone to outbursts of gibberish when emotional or tense. Now, they only seemed to occur when she was relaxed. Which, with Mary, was rarely.

Marshall smiled as Mary flopped onto the bed he had just vacated.

"What kind of bears, Mare?" he asked.

Her aphasia had become his own special puzzle. He'd asked around, subtly, but no one in her family or small circle of friends had seen any sign of her aphasia since she had gone back to work. It appeared he was the only one that ever saw this side of her. That she was relaxed enough around him not to care she was talking rubbish, gave him enough satisfaction that he could almost overlook the fact that she wasn't completely healed.

"White ones," Mary mumbled as she tried to bury into the covers that still radiated Marshall's body heat.

"Have you called downstairs and asked them to fix the heating?" he asked.

"No," she grumbled.

Marshall stepped to the phone beside the bed and placed the call. He turned back to Mary when he was done.

"Are you asleep?"

"No airplane," Mary replied after a rustle of movement that Marshal read as her shaking her head.

Marshall smiled. Some words, it seemed, were permanently messed up in Mary's mind. The link between pyjamas and airplanes was lost on anyone but the two of them.

"You wanna talk about the plan for tomorrow?"

"No plan. No clue in charge."

"Yeah, you're gonna have to talk some sense into him. I had a couple of interesting conversations at the office today..."

Mary snorted in amusement. An arm emerged from the covers to point in his general direction. "You can't talk," she accused.

Marshall smiled. "Okay, so I overheard some useful snippets about our friend Faber."

"True friends don't wear plaid."

Marshall couldn't work that one out. "That may be so, but I think we're going to have problems with that one."

"Feds suck."

That one needed no translation and Marshall couldn't help but agree.

xxx

Mary checked her phone, as she did every day before leaving the office.

One missed call.

She looked at the caller's name and hesitated. Faber. What the hell did he want? She dialled her voicemail number and waited while the automated woman told her she had no new messages.

'What the hell?' she thought. 'Why would Faber call but not leave a message?'

She looked into the call log and saw the call had been disconnected. She looked around the office. She knew she hadn't hung up on him – she would have done, but she would have agonised over it and spent days tearing herself apart wondering if the call was work related or playing with might-have-beens in her mind. Whoever had ended the call had removed the indecision from her hands.

'Who would have done that,' she wondered. Who was that stupid? Who was that brave?

Her eyes fell on her partner, engrossed in paperwork associated with the Donaldsons. He was just that stupid. He was exactly that brave. And it wasn't as though there wasn't precedent.

xxx

"_Men are pigs!" Mary declared over the noise of the bar._

_Marshall wanted to disagree, but today he'd been faced with overwhelming evidence and couldn't dispute Mary's statement._

_Mary was still fuming over being forced to capitulate on inducting Jay's mistress into the program. "Lying, cheating pigs!"_

"_Women aren't much better," Marshall said quietly, making Mary look at him questioningly. "She knows he's married, yet she's here anyway."_

"_People suck!" Mary widened her vitriol to include everyone she'd ever met. _

_She heaved a sigh mingled with a curse and collapsed forward onto the table, cradling her head in her arms._

"_Problems with the boy-toy?" Marshall asked, wondering why their latest witnesses were hitting a little close to home for his partner._

_Mary positively growled._

"_Spill," Marshall demanded, always eager for news of the demise of the ballplayer. It had to come soon, he kept telling himself._

"_He's been acting odd. Secretive. I don't like it."_

"_I'm sure he has an explanation," Marshall said reasonably, although the little devil on his shoulder was telling him to play on her fears._

_He didn't need to though, Mary's suspicious nature was doing all the work for him._

_She turned her head so she could talk to Marshall without getting a mouthful of sleeve. "I bet he's cheating on me. I bet he has a skanky whore that he's with right now..." _

"_Not every man cheats, Mare." Marshall knew the more he denied it when Mary was in this mood, the more she would argue her side and slowly convince herself that she should end it with Raph._

"_I should just find the nearest man and screw him senseless. That would show him."_

"_What would that teach him? If he's not cheating on you, then you'll have ruined a relationship for no reason. And if he is, do you think he'll learn anything from it? Do you think Jay would care if Marci cheated on him in retaliation? You'd be turning yourself into Jay, and for what? There's no way you'd stoop that low. That's not you, Mare."_

_Mary humphed, "It should be. And the mood I'm in tonight, it might just be me."_

"_No it won't," Marshall pointed out with finality as he stood to make his way to the bar. "Another?"_

"_Sure," Mary waved him away without lifting her head._

_Marshall made a quick trip to the men's room before heading to the bar. As he returned, he noticed a guy moving away from the table Mary sat at. He took up a position at the bar next to the guy and the group he was obviously with._

"_That was quick," one of the guys said on seeing his friend return to the fold._

_The first guy smiled, "Shot down."_

_A third guy joined the conversation, "You're obviously not her type. She looks like a filly that could be a wild ride. There's no way you're up to the task, but I enjoy a challenge." He smoothed his hair down, preparing to make a move on Mary._

"_I bet you get nowhere," the first guy said, having experienced one of Mary's put-downs first hand._

"_How much?"_

_They settled on a forfeit and the challenged guy took a swig of his drink, placed the bottle on the bar and went to try his luck with Mary._

_As he moved to step around Marshall, Marshall took a step directly into his path._

"_What the...? Hey, watch yourself, Buddy."_

_Marshall smiled. "I wouldn't if I was you."_

"_Huh?"_

_Marshall gestured to the guy's intended destination. _

"_What's it to you?" the guy asked, narrowing his eyes. _

"_She's not a bet to be won. She's not a challenge. She's most definitely not some filly for you to tame. She's a woman who deserves to be treated with respect. And unless you can show me you know what respect means, you're not going over there."_

"_Hey, Karl," one of the guy's friends called warningly._

_Karl looked round and saw his friend motion to Marshall's waist. Karl followed his friend's line of sight and stepped back when he saw the holster at the other man's hip. He looked back up at Marshall._

"_Hey, man, we're just having a bit of fun. No harm done." He turned back to the bar and his friends, abandoning his pursuit of Mary._

_Marshall picked up the two beers he had ordered and headed back to the table._

"_Thanks," Mary said as he handed her the beer. _

_Marshall knew she wasn't referring to the beer._

"_I only have so much patience and will power tonight," she told him._

"_I know."_

xxx

Marshall felt Mary's eyes on him and looked up. She was standing next to her desk, phone in hand and a puzzled look on her face. When he met her eye, he knew she had worked out what he had done.

Mary stared at Marshall for a long moment, her thoughts unreadable. Then, in one of her mercurial shifts of mood that still left Marshall breathless, she nodded her silent thanks to him, slipped her phone into its place at her hip, slung her bag over her shoulder and left the office.

* * *

**AN:** From my calculations, Jay and Marci entered the program around the same time Raph bough the engagement ring, hence the secrecy and suspicion on his and Mary's parts respectively.


	24. Chapter 24

**AN:** Sorry, folks, kinda trip over real for a while there. The approach of Christmas (and lots of Christmas markets) has slowed me down considerably. I'll try to get C25 posted next Monday, but I can't promise anything.

**Spoilers for/tie-in with Fish or Cut Betta.**

* * *

Something was bothering Mary.

Marshall didn't know what, but he knew there was something on her mind. As they drove to visit the girlfriend of their mobster witness, he contemplated the options.

He suspected it had something to do with Raph and their recent break-up. As far as Marshall could tell, she'd been fine since it happened. But in true Mary style, the inevitable break down was on a time delay and he was relegated to waiting for it to hit her. He spent his time alternatively hoping she wouldn't do something stupid when it did and hoping he was there to pick up the pieces when she did. When she had reassured him that she didn't need him to accompany her as Raph picked up the last of his things, Marshall had taken her at her word. He hadn't wanted to be there anyway. He hadn't wanted to see the defeat in Raph's eyes and be reminded of the fight he and Raph had had. He didn't want to be reminded of the trap of his own making, so eloquently pointed out to him by Raph.

No, he'd actually been relieved when Mary had turned down his telepathic offer. If she had accepted his help, he would have been there for her without hesitation, regardless of his own feelings on the matter, but deep down he hadn't wanted to be there. Now, however, he was wondering if he should have been there anyway, regardless of his and Mary's wishes. He suspected something had happened. What could have happened in the half hour that he and Mary had been apart the previous day was something that had occupied his mind most of the morning. His main worry was that somehow, against all odds, Mary and Raph had decided to give it another go. And if that was the case, he couldn't help thinking that he could have prevented it if he had been there.

As he drove, Marshall continued to puzzle through all the likely and unlikely scenarios. He finally decided that they had not got back together: Mary was still in a sour mood, albeit quieter than normal, and he had spotted the redness around her eyes when she had returned to the office. So, he reasoned, whatever was bothering Mary had happened after he had left the office last night, after he had left her alone with her thoughts. She had told him about the phone call from Dom and going to meet him only to be dragged into his date.

Had something else happened?

Had something happened at the bar? Marshall wondered.

He wouldn't put it past Mary to pick up someone while on the rebound and have a one-night stand, but she hadn't mentioned anything. Her previous conquests had all been shared with him in graphic detail. That had been before Raph. Raph had somehow put an end to the string of guys that had paraded through Mary's life and had subtly changed her relationship with Marshall. For that reason alone, Marshall wasn't sad to see him go. He'd always been a source of friction between him and Mary, even if Mary had only recently noticed and worked out why. Her aphasia enhanced ability to read him had forced him to admit to his dislike of Raph, but Mary had dropped the subject and not asked about the cause of his dislike. Whatever conclusions she had drawn from that conversation, she had kept to herself.

Just like whatever had happened last night, Marshall thought.

However, unlike the conversation about Raph, _this_ Marshall wanted to talk about. He wanted to know what had happened. He needed to know before he lost his opportunity again: If Mary was back to her string of meaningless relationships with men, perhaps she was over Raph. Perhaps she was ready to move on. In which case, maybe it was time for him to make a move.

He had been laying the groundwork for such a situation for years, getting her to trust him. It had taken a long time to overcome her distrust of people, but he had managed it. Then, just as he was preparing to make a move, Raph had arrived on the scene and Marshall had faded into the background, eclipsed by the other man. He hadn't worried at first – he had expected Raph to last all of a month before Mary got bored with him. But all of Marshall's hard work getting Mary to trust and to want a relationship had backfired. She had taken his advice and applied it to another man. When the fourth month had passed and Raph was still in Mary's life, Marshall had seriously considered sabotaging the relationship. It would have been simple – a well placed comment or question, just to get Mary thinking, doubting – and the relationship would have come crashing down. Being in a relationship wasn't a natural state for Mary and it would have only have taken a gentle nudge in those early days to topple it, like a vase balanced precariously on the edge of a table. Marshall had resisted, though. He hadn't wanted to risk jogging the vase only to watch it fall and smash. He knew if he interfered and Mary found out, he would be back to the start on the trust front. Or worse.

So he had kept quiet. Whenever Mary had looked about to fall, he had reached out a hand and steadied her, gently shifting her away from the hazardous edge onto firmer footing, even though it broke his heart to do so. Finally, he had come to accept his position in her life and reasoned it was better to admire a whole, beautiful vase from afar, than to own a broken one.

He had lived a kind of half life since then, not quite daring to hope, not entirely willing to let go. He had dated occasionally, unable to form a lasting relationship while still secretly nursing the idea of him and Mary. He had clung to the idea until that fateful day when he had spotted the tan line on her finger. That was the day he had finally had to confront the reality of the situation and let go of his dream.

It had taken a few more days for him to truly let go and make yet another hesitant, half-hearted attempt to start dating, only to have his first date interrupted by _that_ phone call. In an instant, he had been dragged back in. In that instant, he had known that he would never be content to only admire from afar.

That was the thought that had kept him at Mary's side when Raph had demanded otherwise. It was that thought that had made him pursue his conversation with Raph to its bitter end. It was that thought that had prompted him to resurrect his three-step plan.

That thought, the demise of Mary and Raph's relationship and the kiss Mary had given him had formed his own personal holy trinity over the last few weeks. The kiss had given him more hope for a future with Mary than seeing Mary's bare ring finger had. It, and the heartfelt thanks it had carried, had symbolised the completion of stage two and now Marshall was prepared to move on to the final stage of his plan. However, the final stage was the most difficult. It had to be planned carefully.

The day before, he had floated a test balloon with his backhanded compliment and had been pleased with Mary's reaction.

"_Pretty," Mary said, admiring the fish circling lazily in its bowl._

"_And vicious," Dom pointed out._

"_Remind you of anyone?"_

_Mary looked at him and smiled softly. "Thanks."_

It seemed it truly was time to tackle Stage Three. But first he had to know what was bothering Mary, and there was only one way to find out.

"Okay, what?" Marshall finally asked as they pulled up outside Naomi's house.

"What what?" came Mary's reply.

"There's something else."

"There's not."

"There is."

"Like what?" Mary asked before the conversation could descend into a 'is not! - is to!' fight.

"I don't know," Marshall admitted. "I know there's something you're not telling me."

"Stop. It's like you rent a room in my head."

"And somewhere in mine you occupy a small pied à terre."

"Don't say pied à terre."

Marshall continued with the metaphor, "And we're allowed to close the doors now and then so to speak. But it can't last. You won't be able to hold out. You're just going to blurt it out at some point. I'm giving you a chance, now, to blurt."

"No news. Nothing happened. No blurting. Okay?"

"Okay," Marshall consented, although he didn't stop watching Mary, trying to spot a chink in her armour.

"Oh my God, would you look at that?" Mary exclaimed, seeing Naomi getting it on with a man that looked suspiciously like Dom.

Marshall glanced over but soon looked back at Mary, peering at her intently as he said, "Well, it was a full moon last night which we know tends to heighten emotional states and bring about behavior that is as reckless as it is freeing." He tested his picked-up-a-guy-while-on-the-rebound idea hopefully.

"We don't know that, you think that," Mary said before she switched back into work mode.

xxx

"I slept with Raph," Mary blurted out.

"I know."

"Oh, right," she sighed.

"You gonna get back together?" Marshall asked, hoping his desire for a negative answer wasn't too apparent. The question had been plaguing him since Mary's out-of-character response to finding out her witness' girlfriend was getting back with her ex-husband.

"I don't know," Mary said as they walked through the aquarium. "You can fight all you want – You still gotta go the way your blood beats."

And Mary was well aware that her blood had always beaten a little faster around Raph.

xxx

"_Thanks, Marshall, you really know how to put things in perspective," Mary said, slapping Marshall on the shoulder as she walked past. _

_Mary stood next to the cash register, trying to attract the waitress' attention. She looked around the diner to see where the woman was. She couldn't see the waitress, but she did see something that caught her eye._

_From what she could see, he was tall, Hispanic and built like an Adonis. He was laughing with his friends, his eyes sparkling with merriment. Mary felt her heart pound as he looked over at her. He was still smiling as their eyes met and Mary offered a small smile back. _

_She looked away, Marshall's previous comment ringing in her ears even though she had tried to dismissed it. Like so many of Marshall's offhand comments, his words lodged in her brain and had taken root. She glanced unconsciously toward Marshall, only to see him looking back at her. She turned back to the register to find the waitress glaring at her impatiently. Mary pulled some cash out and thrust it towards the woman. As she waited for her change, she felt a presence next to her. _

"_Hey." His voice was heavily accented but as smooth as honey._

_She nodded in reply._

"_Is that your boyfriend?" he asked._

_Mary glanced at Marshall and snorted. "Him? No." The disbelief and scorn in her voice conveyed the idiocy of his question._

"_Good," he breathed seductively._

_Mary decided two could play that game and turned to face him, leaning on the counter so that her jacket fell open to reveal her curves. The play was noticed by several of the men in the diner, including Marshall and it had the desired effect on the man next to her._

_His attention was distracted for a few seconds, then he managed to drag his eyes back to Mary's face. _

"_Raphael," He said, offering his hand with his name. Mary took it and was pleasantly surprised by the firmness of his hand shake._

"_Mary."_

"_Well, Mary, it's a pleasure to meet you," Raphael rolled the R in her name and softened his vowels in a way that made Mary's blood rush south._

xxx

Yes, the heat and the passion had been there right from the word go, Mary thought. She had known it, Raph had known it. Even Marshall had known it. That was why he had issued that stupid challenge and why she had accepted – She had initially turned Raph down because of a stupid bet with Marshall.

She still maintained that she had won the bet fair and square. It had taken some creative counting and a loose definition of the word 'date', but she had somehow managed to have three dates with Raph before sleeping with him, as per the terms of the bet. The fact that she counted the initial conversation in the diner and a chance meeting in a grocery store as dates was something she chose not to share with Marshall.

She could no longer remember what had prompted the challenge, but she clearly recalled the bet had been on his terms, so losing wasn't an option. The idea of spending a weekend fishing with him was too much for her to even contemplate, so her creative counting solution had been necessary when her self control had failed.

She couldn't bring herself to regret her lack of self-control, the sex had been amazing and she had ended up in a relationship with Raph. She suspected that had kind of been the point of Marshall's challenge – to make her see that she was capable of maintaining a relationship longer than her 36 hour marriage. She had certainly managed to prove that to him...and to herself.

And if that hadn't been the point, she had still got out of a weekend of fishing.

Who said you couldn't have your cake and eat it? Mary thought as she stared at the fish around her.

Marshall had pleaded with her to take a tour of the aquarium they had predictably found their soon-to-be-ex-witness in. They had slowly fallen behind the tour guide until they were the only ones in the room. Mary suspected Marshall's commentary would be more interesting anyway. If she had been listening, that was. He was still chatting inanely next to her, no doubt about the mating habits of the sting-ray or something equally pointless, but Mary hadn't heard a word for several minutes.

She was searching for a solution for current mess her love life was in. Her mind was in the past, hoping to find a clue or some words of wisdom there. Had her dad ever said anything about what to do if you got so desperately lonely one night that you phoned your ex for some comfort sex? She didn't think he had. She was pretty sure that Marshall would be able to offer some advice, but she knew now that he disliked Raph and she would never be sure if his advice was coloured by that animosity.

This time she was just going to have to figure it out on her own: Did she try again with Raph? Or was it time to let go?


	25. Chapter 25

**AN: **I strongly recommend re-reading chapter 24 before reading this one. They started out as one chapter but it got too long so I posted the first half separately even though it's still basically one chapter.

* * *

Marshall couldn't concentrate on the fish swimming around him.

He had begged Mary to let him look around the aquarium. She had agreed after extracting a promise from him to fill out the travel related paperwork, even though they were dealing with her witness. He had agreed grudgingly. But it now seemed like it was going to be a wasted trip and Mary was going to get out of her bureaucratic headache for no reason.

Mary's words echoed in his head, distracting him from the sting rays even as he explained to Mary how sting rays used electro-receptors to detect the prey they couldn't see.

"_You gotta go the way your blood beats."_

The trouble with Mary was, she thought just because blood gets diverted on occasion, that's where you should follow it.

xxx

_Mary glared at the waitress as she walked past them again and still didn't deliver their breakfasts._

"_But, why?" Marshall refocused Mary's attention on the conversation._

"_Coz I'm sick of it. That's why."_

"_Okay."_

_There was a pause; Marshall's acceptance of her earlier statement hung in the air._

"_What? Is that it? No witty comeback? No explanation as to how it's biologically impossible?"_

"_Nope."_

_Mary narrowed her eyes to regard Marshall._

"_You don't think I can do it!" she declared._

_Marshall didn't say anything._

"_You don't think I can go a month without sex!" Mary sounded surprised at Marshall's lack of faith in her self control._

"_I didn't say that," he tried to defend himself, albeit belatedly. The heartbeat pause before his denial gave him away._

"_You didn't need to," Mary said despondently. _

_They lapsed into silence for a while, aided by the waitress finally bringing their breakfasts over. Mary continued to watch Marshall surreptitiously throughout the meal._

"_You do it," Mary grumbled after a few minutes._

"_Do what?" Marshall asked around a mouthful of pancake._

"_Go without sex."_

_Marshall almost choked as he tried to swallow his mouthful._

"_W-w-what?" he stammered when he could finally breathe. "W-w-why do you think that?"_

"_Oh, come on, stop being such a prude. We both know it's just been you and your five fingered friend since..."_

"_You're wrong," Marshall cut in. _

_Mary smirked. "Really? When was the last time you actually got laid?"_

"_I date," he said, trying not to rise to the bait and giver her more ammunition about his love life._

"_I'm not talking about dates, I'm talking about sex. Hot, sweaty, banging the headboard sex!"_

"_I know, and like I said, _I date_."_

_Marshall emphasised the word date slightly, leaving Mary in no doubt as to what a date with him entailed. She smirked again, thinking she had won that round and tried to picture her nerdy partner making a woman's toes curl. _

_Marshall could see where Mary's thoughts were heading and let her think on it for a while. More and more recently, he'd been wanting her to see him as a man and not just her lap-dog or lackey. He was a man with desires, urges and a life outside work she knew very little about. Every so often he would remind her of this, but it was now becoming more important to him for her to stop seeing him as some androgynous figure in her life. _

_At some point over the last year and a bit, the friendship had deepened. As Mary had let him into the darker parts of her life, Marshall had discovered the treasure hidden beneath Mary's brash exterior. At first he had dismissed the feeling as awe and smug satisfaction at being the only one allowed a glimpse past her defences, but once the elation of succeeding where no one else had had worn off, the feeling was still there. It had taken him a while to identify it and while he was trying, it had continued to grow as Mary offered him a little bit more of herself, a piece at a time. By the time the feeling had a name, it was too late. Marshall had somehow landed himself in a whole load of trouble by falling in love with his partner._

_Once he had admitted that to himself, he had come up with a three-step plan: 1) Get Mary to trust and rely on him. 2) Get Mary to realise she needed him. 3) Ask her out._

_It was simple. It was perfect. And it was going to take forever._

_Four months later and he was still on step one._

Hell,_ he thought, _I've been on step one for the last three years.

_Getting Mary to trust him was a slow process, one that was incremental in nature and often in the opposite direction to the one he wanted it to go. Still, strategy was his forte and patience was his virtue. He was prepared to settle in for a long game and it was finally time for him to make his next move._

"_And _why_ aren't you talking about dates?" he asked, turning the conversation back onto her. "What's wrong with dating? You talk about your...conquests," he grimaced at the word, "...all the time, but you never mention the date part of the evening. Or do you just skip that bit entirely?"_

"_Nooo..." Mary drawled. "I make them take me out first..."_

"_How many times?"_

_Mary studied her plate intently._

"_That's what I thought," Marshall said, picking up his knife and fork to finish his breakfast. "You barely know these men, yet you expect them to fulfil your every desire. It's no wonder not all of them manage to please you the way you want."_

"_What are you saying?"_

"_I'm saying that if you took the time to get to know someone first. To build an emotional connection, even, then maybe you wouldn't find sex so empty."_

"_So I can't have sex until I have an emotional connection with someone? You know how many people that's applied to over the last ten years? One. You. So I can either have sex with you, or never again?" Mary asked scornfully. "Yeah, no thanks. I think I'll stick with the empty sex." _

_Mary stood and went to pay at the till. As she passed Marshall, she paused. _

"_Thanks, Marshall, you really know how to put things in perspective," she said, slapping Marshall on the shoulder. Marshall flinched at the touch. He'd been hoping to edge her onto another path, to plant the idea in her mind, but she seemed to think that living a life of celibacy would be preferable to sleeping with him. _

_He watched her as she waited impatiently for the waitress. He saw the instant something caught her attention and looked over at the man. He was tall, Hispanic and looked like he spent more time working out than working. Marshall looked back at Mary, wondering if his words had had any effect on her or if she had forgotten them already. He was surprised to see her glance back at him, as if for confirmation or reassurance, he couldn't tell. He then watched in resignation as the man approached Mary. _

xxx

They were an hour out of Houston when the silence and weight of the decision ahead of her finally made Mary break. She had no one else to turn to and needed another opinion. Even if it was biased.

"Do you think I should get back with Raph?" she asked Marshall as he drove..

"_No!_" screamed Marshall's heart, but it was drowned out by his head. He waited until both sides of him had settled down before giving Mary the answer he knew she needed to hear.

"It's not my decision, Mare. Only you can answer that question."

He glanced over and saw her watching him intently. He hoped he hadn't given himself away with his hesitation and non-committal answer. Mary appeared satisfied with his answer and returned to staring out the passenger window.

Marshall assumed she was wrestling with the answer to her question, until she asked, "Do you want to go fishing next weekend?"

Marshall glanced at her several times in quick succession while trying to work out what she meant. His mind simultaneously travelled down word-association pathways and searched his memories for any connections to translate Aphasic-Mary.

Mary looked over when Marshall didn't answer after a few seconds. She recognised the look on his face and chuckled.

"That wasn't aphasic, that was a genuine question, Numbnuts," she said, still chuckling.

Marshall relaxed. Even after all this time, he still tensed up at any reminder of Mary's injury and each occurrence of her aphasia.

"You spend the afternoon in an aquarium and come out wanting to go fishing. Did the fish upset you, Mare?" he joked.

Mary laughed, "Do you want to go fishing next weekend or not?"

Marshall didn't answer instantly. He looked at her again, frowning as he did so, before asking, "Why would I want to do that?"

"I don't know. I was thinking about that stupid bet we made and ..."

"Which bet?" Marshall interrupted.

"The day I met Raph. You bet me I couldn't go three dates without sleeping with him. That's why I turned him down."

Marshall shook his head slowly. "I don't remember that, Mare."

Mary stared at him as if he had grown another head. "'Course you do. You said if I didn't go on at least three dates before jumping him, then I had to go fishing with you."

"That's not what I remember," Marshall repeated slowly. "Why would you turn down a date if you needed three sex-free dates to get out of a fishing trip?" he pointed out.

Mary thought about that for a moment.

"What do you remember?" Mary asked, curious that he would question her memory. He knew she could remember seemingly irrelevant details from days that mattered to her, so there was obviously a reason behind him choosing to question her memory of this event.

"I remember you turning him down _then_ trying to bait me into accepting a bet. Any bet. I believe the terms started at going a month without sex, then reduced to three dates. And you were the one that suggested the forfeit."

Marshall looked at Mary to see her listening intently with a puzzled look on her face.

"I don't even like fishing," he continued. "You just seem to think I do."

Marshall let Mary take in this new information for a moment.

When he could see Mary was about to go crazy questioning her recollection of that day, he offered, "But if you want me to take you fishing, I will."

Mary looked at him. She knew he had only said that to snap her out of her rapid downward spiral, but even in his joke there was a serious offer. If she wanted to go fishing, Marshall would go with her despite his apparent dislike of the activity.

Was there anything he wouldn't do for her? she wondered as they continued to drive toward home and the awaiting dilemma of what to do about Raph.

xxx

Mary watched the fish Dom had given her swim around the bowl.

Her thoughts circled in ways that mimicked the fish. They kept circling back to the night before, to Marshall's reaction when she told him about sleeping with Raph, to the day she met Raph, and to places she wished it wouldn't go.

Memories of events recent and far past rose unbidden and Mary wondered if what they said about fish was true. Did they really have three-second memories? What would that be like? she wondered.

What would it be like to have forgotten everything in her life and to have to start from scratch? Which relationships would she have chosen to rebuild if she had lost her memories rather than her speech in the wake of Carmello's bullet?

She knew she would have struggled with her family; she knew she would never be able to abandon them, no matter what happened to her, but she suspected that she would have spent a significant portion of her recovery questioning how she was related to them when they were so different. But would they be different? Would she be so different from them without the memory of her dad leaving and the years of hardship? Perhaps she would be more like Brandi if she hadn't had to be the adult from a young age.

Mary shuddered at the thought and a memory of Shelley came back to her. Something about still being who you were even if you didn't know who you were. Reassured slightly, Mary promised herself that she would be nicer to Shelly the Shrink next time she saw her. A ghost of a smile flitted across Mary's face at the alliteration in the name Shelley the Shrink. A more lingering smile appeared as she considered that Marshall had penetrated her mind thoroughly enough that she had no trouble recalling the word alliteration, even as she still struggled with everyday words like pyjamas and timetable.

Marshall.

There was one relationship she would definitely want to rebuild if she had lost all her memories. His analogy about renting a room was more true than she cared to admit. Except, Marshall hadn't so

much rented a room as brought a plot of land and constructed a two storey home with room for horses out back. As she thought about it, she found it easy to visualise the type of house he would build – a sprawling, ranch-style home to symbolise his relaxed nature, with plenty of room for visitors or kids, a thought she quickly shied away from. What the horses symbolised, she didn't know. She had no idea if Marshall could actually ride or if the cowboy boots were just for show. After finding out his dislike of fishing, an assumption she had obviously made when she had first met him and had only just realised wasn't true, she was wary about making any more assumptions.

Maybe they could have a fish pond, she thought. Or, at least, a bigger bowl for her betta, the first pet she had owned since her pet rock. The betta certainly was prettier than the rock, but the rock had made a good projectile with which to hit Robert Kwarmee, so she couldn't attest to which was the most vicious pet.

"_Pretty," she said, admiring the fish circling lazily in its bowl._

"_And vicious," Dom pointed out._

"_Remind you of anyone?"_

_She looked at Marshall and smiled softly. "Thanks."_

Had Marshall been flirting with her when he said that? She hadn't noticed at the time, she had just taken it as a compliment, but as she considered it, she couldn't remember any other time Marshall had complimented her openly. Especially not in front of someone, a witness no less. He often came to her defence after she had stormed out a room in frustration – he would take a moment to point out in what ways she was right, or tell the person frustrating her how good she was at her job, but he never said anything to her face.

She laughed as she realised she was seriously considering that Marshall had been flirting with her. Jesus, was she so desperate that she was reading things into a simple compliment that didn't exist. Marshall had never shown any interest in her.

_Liar_, a voice at the back of her mind whispered.

Okay, she admitted, maybe he had once or twice. There had been that kiss in the stable. He had definitely shown an interest in her then, although he had dismissed it as a natural response and Mary had assumed he would have been ready to throw down with anyone at that moment. It hadn't been long after that he had hooked up with the overly adventurous professor and scratched that itch. Mary had mostly forgotten about that stolen kiss, but now she could recall all too clearly the sensation of his lips on hers, the warmth of his hands and their firm grip on her.

A tremor passed over and through her body at the remembered sensations.

No wonder she had ended up sleeping with Raph the night before if she was horny enough to get all hot and bothered by a kiss that happened almost two years ago.

Raph.

She still wasn't entirely sure what she had been thinking the night before when she had called Raph. She had been confused when she had seen him laughing with another woman. A rush of emotions had swept over her and she was still trying to identify them. Dom's constant chatter about how badly he wanted to get married and have a normal life hadn't helped. It had thrown into stark relief how close she had come to having everything she was supposed to want. Her mom had been so happy for her. Yet she had managed to screw it up.

Then to compound things, she had done the one thing she had always promised herself she would never do – make a booty call to an ex. She had known it was a bad idea, how it only ever made things worse. More complicated. But she had done it anyway.

In the morning, she couldn't face him. She could barely face herself. So she had crept out quietly, much as she had done most mornings while they were in a relationship. She had crept away to work. To Marshall, who always understood her and never judged her. But she couldn't bring herself to tell him about what she had done the night before. She knew now about his dislike of Raph and hadn't wanted to face his disappointment in her. He would try to hide his disappointment, but she would see it. Had seen it, because of course she hadn't needed to tell him about Raph. He had known anyway.

The disappointment had been written across his stance, in the way he didn't meet her eyes as he said, "I know."

It had forced her to admit she was disappointed in herself as well. She had let herself down. Let Marshall down.

She couldn't help but think it was a poor way to repay a friend: Marshall had proven himself to her over and over again. She had come to realise that over the last few months. In the days immediately after her shooting, he had been the only person she had felt comfortable with and the only one capable of understanding her. She hadn't forgotten that. The sensation of not being able to communicate still haunted her at night. Those were the nights she had crept out of bed and called Marshall, just to hear his voice.

She also wasn't oblivious to the fact he was the only one that saw what little of her aphasia remained. She had noticed the shift in its occurrences to when she was relaxed and she had spent several evenings puzzling over how Marshall always seemed to around when she was relaxed enough not to care if she mixed up her words before she had realised which was the cause and which the effect.

She had always shied away from thoughts of something more with Marshall, especially when she had been in a relationship with Raph. But even then, there had been times when she had wondered what it would be like to be in an easy relationship, one she didn't have to work at constantly, and every time her mind had provided her of an image of Marshall.

Marshall would be easy to be with. She knew that. She only had to look at their friendship, something she had been doing a lot recently, to see how easy it would be. But she was never one to take the easy path in life. She had had to fight her entire life and taking the easy option felt like surrender. She hadn't been ready to surrender.

Somehow, though, it no longer felt like surrender. She had had too many other battles to fight since she had been shot. Now she could distinguish between surrender and a tactical retreat.

She had almost surrendered to the aphasia.

Only Marshall had saved her from defeat. He had made her rally the troops and re-enter the battle. She had stared surrender in the face and Marshall had pulled her back.

She owed him for that alone.

She owed him for so much more than that.

She needed to show Marshall that she listened to him and took his feelings into consideration. That she could be a good friend too. That was the least she owed him.

She had tried to demonstrate that with her offer of a fishing trip, only to find that she didn't know him as well as he knew her.

As the fish circled the bowl once more, Mary idly wondered if their positions had been reversed, whether she would have been able to understand Aphasic-Marshall as easily as he appeared to understand her. She doubted it. Marshall had always been the more sensitive one in their relationship, a fact she took advantage of on occasion. She had been trying to be better recently. To be a better friend. She had asked him about his hobbies more and listened when he explained the difference between origami and kirigami. She had thanked him when he lent her his car. It didn't feel like enough, though. She wanted to do something nice for him. To show him she appreciated him.

As she tried to think of things he liked that they could do together, there was one thing that she kept returning to.

Marshall didn't like Raph.

He had admitted his dislike of Raph a while ago and Mary suspected there was more to the exchange of words they had shared in the hospital than just frayed nerves and short tempers, but Mary had been too focused on her own recovery to delve deeper. She had accepted the animosity once she had seen it and tried to keep the two men in her life apart even more rigorously than she had before. Today, she had seen his hesitation when she had asked his opinion about getting back together with Raph, but his actual answer had only had her interests at heart. She hadn't pushed him further, knowing that he didn't want to tell her to get back with Raph, yet would never tell her to end it with him. That demonstration of selflessness, on top of all the others she had recently been remembering, had prompted her to offer a weekend of fishing, just the two of them. She was almost warming to the idea when he had stolen the rug from under her feet. She was still struggling with the idea that Marshall didn't like fishing – the man who like everything.

There was one thing she was sure about his opinion on, though. And one thing she could give him even if he would never ask for it.

Decision finally made, she reached for her phone to call Raph.

* * *

That's all from me this side of Christmas, so I hope everyone has a lovely holiday, and I'll be back in the new year with the remaining four chapters of this story.

Merry Christmas, all!


	26. Chapter 26

"The fish is dead."

"Long live the fish," came Marshall's instant reply. He didn't look away from his computer screen as he spoke.

"Huh?"

Marshall looked up at Mary. "What?" he shrugged. "You started it."

Mary sank into her chair. Today was shaping up to be just peachy. First she had woken up to find her pet betta floating belly-up in its bowl. Any morning that began with the disposal of a dead fish had to signify the direction the rest of the day would take. And so far it seemed she was right - her innocuous greeting had set Marshall off.

"I thought we were doing some kind of coded greeting. Like in a spy movie," Marshall was saying when Mary forced herself to listen.

Mary sighed.

"'The crow flies at midnight,'" he quoted in a conspiratorial whisper, then said, "but, you know, more fish based."

"You're a geek, you know that, right?" Mary asked as she made a note to remember the coded call and response, knowing that would be the pass phrase the next time Marshall was in charge of such things.

As Marshall began speculating on the origin of the phrase and history of coded greetings, Mary looked around for the nearest projectile. Oh yes, her day was shaping up just fine, she thought sarcastically as she struggled to find anything suitable to throw. She finally found a discarded paper cup and balled it up. Marshall's discourse on the flight pattern of crows was cut short by a cup impacting on his forehead.

xxx

The day took another turn for the worse after lunch.

Mary was musing on the implications of Marshall offering to take her for a drink after work when Faber showed up. All thoughts of whether Marshall had meant a relaxing drink between friends, or something more fled her head as Faber grinned that shit-eating grin at her.

She was just regaining her footing, managing to stay professional after the surprise of seeing him pouring coffee from their pot, when he was suddenly right there in front of her.

"The last one was actually business," he was saying, "This."

Mary looked at her desk slightly abashed. Since Marshall had relieved her of the responsibility of answering that first phone call, she had been only too happy to follow his example and hit ignore each time Faber called until it had become a reflex.

Now, as Faber stood in front of her and the scent of his cologne washed over her, she was struggling to recall why answering the phone had been such a bad idea. Faber kept talking and she answered him while keeping her eyes on her desk.

"The others were...not business," he pointed out, adjusting his tie, although Mary still wasn't looking at him.

"Let's stick to business," she replied.

Faber changed track. "You mad at me?"

Mary looked up, surprised at the blunt question and its neediness.

"Mad at you?" she repeated. "What is this? Homeroom?"

"I don't know, you seem...er..." Faber didn't finish.

"Like me," Mary cut in, already fed up with his childish BS when there was a witness sat in the other room. "I seem like me. Beginning, middle and end of story. So lets get back to it, okay?"

She didn't give Faber time to respond before pushing on, listing all the details she needed from him. Her mind no longer struggled to recall the reasons, other than her recent break-up with Raph, that had led to her turning him down.

"Thank you," Mary said sharply as Faber handed her the file containing the information she needed.

Faber continued in the same obnoxious tone, "I recall your deep need for full disclosure and that you come with a one-man entourage," he added, finally acknowledging the loitering Marshall.

Mary looked over at Marshall as he returned Faber's greeting with much more civility than she had been able to muster.

As Mary looked at Marshall leaning against her favourite filing cabinet, she had a sudden flashback to the day she and the cabinet had become firm friends. The day Marshall had decided she needed a lesson in filing after spending three hours searching for a document that had turned up on her desk under a pile of gas receipts and claims forms she had spent weeks intending to fill out.

She dipped her head to hide the smile that emerged at the memory. She didn't want Faber getting the wrong idea. She was trying her best to stay professional. She was the only woman in an all male office and while the new Marshals had quickly learnt to either treat her with respect or stay out of her way, she didn't want to give them any excuse to change that. She now kept her game face on permanently in the office. Marshall was the only one allowed to see her vulnerable side and her opportunities to being alone with him had dwindled recently. They were back up to full capacity; each handling their own cases, and they no longer had the office to themselves, even late at night.

She glanced at Marshall, who was chatting to Faber about something or other. Seeing Faber was occupied and having heard Marshall's opinions on the recent career choices of Albuquerque native, Neil Patrick Harris, she allowed herself to escape back to when it had just been her and Marshall sharing the office with Stan and life was simple.

xxx

_She leaned causally against the filing cabinet, her right arm draped across the top, hand dangling in front of the top draw. She held her right wrist loosely in her left hand, surreptitiously covering the wrist._

_Stan emerged from his office and wished her a goodnight. She smiled, overly bright compared to what Stan was used to. He hesitated, giving her a searching look before asking if she was alright._

"_I'm fine, Stan," Mary replied, still too cheerful. "Have a good evening." She tried to sound causal and resisted adding a jaunty wave, deciding it would be overkill. _

_Stan looked at her, still puzzled by Mary's behaviour, but didn't question her further. It had been a long day and he just wanted to go home to a long shower and an 18-year-old malt. He didn't want to pry into Mary's oddly good mood. He ran a hand across his forehead as he came to a decision and nodded goodbye before leaving the office._

_Mary breathed a sigh of relief and returned to consider her predicament._

_The handcuffs were standard issue Marshal Service cuffs: They were designed to withstand significant force being applied to them so were unlikely to break, no matter how much Mary tugged and twisted them. She was only going to hurt her wrist doing that. She followed the cuffs to the other end, the end that was attached to the filing cabinet._

_It was fastened around the drawer handle. The handle was securely attached to the drawer front. If she had a screwdriver, she could undo the handle and escape that way, but Marshall had ensured that she had no such resources. He had even moved her desk just out of her reach to guarantee she couldn't reach anything with which to pick the lock. He knew her too well._

_Fortunately, Stan had been out the office most of the afternoon, so she had managed to keep her situation under wraps. When boredom had set in, she had actually resorted to doing the filing, which was the only thing Marshall had left within her reach before he had left on his witness visit. _

_Two hours later, she had finished the filing and was once more on the hunt for something to use to get her out of Marshall's cuffs. She opened the drawer once again and rummaged through the folders. She located nothing but the expected papers contained within their buff folders. She slammed the drawer shut and felt the filing cabinet shudder at the force she had used._

"_Sorry," she muttered to it absently._

"_I see you two have finally made friends." Marshall's voice was a welcome relief as he strolled into the office and draped his coat over his chair._

"_Oh, yeah, we're bestest buddies now," Mary said sarcastically. "We've spent all afternoon talking about boys and painting each others nails. Well, I had to color in all the Os, Ps and Ds as Naomi here doesn't have nails. But you get the idea."_

"_You done?" Marshall asked when Mary's flight of fancy seemed to have run its course._

"_Yes, Dumbass, now get over here and let me out!"_

_Marshall smirked as he moved closer to Mary and the cabinet. He stopped just out of reach and peered around, checking for what had become of the pile of filing he had left._

"_It's all in the cabinet in alphabetical order," Mary sighed. "Now give me the Goddamn keys!"_

_Mary held out her unchained arm and gestured with her outstretched hand. _

_Marshall dug the keys out of his pocket and started to hand them over to her. He stopped midway. He stared at her wrist and arm, then shifted his weight uncomfortably, indecision in his eyes._

"_Marshall?" Mary questioned, seeing his hesitation and fascination with her arm._

"_How'd you get that scar?" he asked, glancing at her before returning to stare at the scar. _

_He grabbed her arm before she could pull it away and held her wrist, gently running his thumb over the pale line where it ended. He had seen the faded scar a couple of times over the years – it was more obvious in the summer months when Mary had a tan – but he'd never got up the courage to ask how she had acquired it._

_Mary let him study her arm, twisting it so she could also see the old injury. There was barely anything to see any more, too many years had passed for it to be noticeable to anyone who wasn't looking for it. Marshall had noticed it anyway._

"_I fell and put my arm through a glass table as a kid," Mary told him with a shrug._

_Marshall stepped towards her and unlocked his cuffs, releasing her. Mary rubbed her wrist as Marshall returned the handcuffs to his desk drawer. When he turned back to Mary, she was standing next to her desk with her head cocked and a thoughtful expression on her face. He watched her a moment._

_When she looked up again, Marshall was still watching her._

"_I didn't trip," she admitted._

_Marshall waited silently._

"_Jinx had been drinking. She was spoiling for a fight and Dad was out. I can't remember what I said or did to upset her, but as she stormed out the house to find him, she pushed me out the way and I fell into the coffee table. I put my hand out to catch myself, but the glass broke and I ended up with this._

"_Jinx was distraught. She took me to the emergency room straight away and the doctors said it was only a scratch." Mary exhaled sharply before she continued. "She bought me ice cream and a new dress afterwards and told me it would be our little secret from Dad. I never told him."_

_She paused and stared across the office thoughtfully for a moment._

"_It's funny the details you remember," she continued. "I can't remember what set her off, but I can remember the dress had red ribbon around the neckline and a picture of a caterpillar sticking his head out of an apple on the hem."_

_Mary looked at Marshall when she had finished._

_She smiled sadly at him, then shrugged. "What? Your family never give you any scars?"_

"_Emotional ones," he admitted, "but probably nothing compared to yours."_

"_Yeah, well, that's family for you. At least, that's my family for you."_

xxx

Faber was going on about his son again. Any moment now Mary was sure he'd bring up his dad. Yep, there it was.

Jesus, the man could bitch about his dad and how much he hated him like no one else, Mary thought. She didn't go on about her dad this much did she? Well, maybe in her head, she admitted, but she hardly ever talked openly about him. She might make a veiled reference or two, but even as a little girl, she had been too aware of her dad's fugitive status and a hidden stack of letters for her to be comfortable talking about him.

She couldn't help but contrast Marshall's attitude to family and Faber's. Marshall had mentioned several times over the years that there was friction in his family, but he had never been as blatantly disrespectful as Faber was being.

Faber was damaged in ways Mary couldn't even begin to understand, in ways she didn't really want to understand. Marshall, for all his protestations of having family problems, had been strong enough to emerge from his childhood mostly intact. At least, that's how it seemed to her.

Mary wondered how he was and checked her phone again for messages.

xxx

Mary got the chance to see the Mann family dysfunctionality up-close a couple of weeks later. After meeting Seth Mann, all Marshall's little comments over the years started to add up. Perhaps it was recentness of Faber's visit and his constant bitching about his father, but every time Marshall looked at his dad, Mary could only see love and respect mingled with the frustration from years of misunderstanding.

How Marshall still had the strength to try and make amends after the week he had had, Mary didn't know. It made her look at her partner with new-found respect that bordered on awe. She couldn't help but marvel at her partner's ability to forgive and love even when it wasn't reciprocated or asked for.

Mary decided that if Marshall could still try after years of miscommunication, then maybe she should make an effort with her long-lost half-brother. When Mary put the phone down from arranging to meet Scott, Seth Mann was standing in front of her desk.

"So, did he pass your test?" Mary asked with a gesture towards the conference room, where Marshall still sat.

"He always has," Seth said gruffly.

Seth watched his son for a few moments before turning back to Mary.

"They say friends are the family you would choose if you could choose your family. I can see Marshall chooses his friends wisely. I'd be proud to have you as a daughter."

Seth held his hand out to Mary who stared at it before taking it and shaking his hand.

"Thank you, Seth," Mary said hesitantly, unsure if they were now on a first-name basis and still surprised by his words.

Seth nodded at her. "Take care of yourself, Mary. And take care of him."

"Will do."

With that, Seth glanced into the conference room once again and strode out of the office.


	27. Chapter 27

**AN:** Sorry about the delay. The season 3 final didn't exactly do wonders for my inspiration levels, but I'm determined to finish this story before S4 starts. Thanks to Roar526 for her beta skills and to Kerrison for prodding me to update.

* * *

"You can sleep if you want," Mary offered as she drove.

"Huh? No way, I'm too excited to sleep."

Mary smiled at her passenger, "You sure that's what's keeping you awake?"

"What else would it be?"

"I think you're scared to sleep in case you won't wake up again. I think you're determined to remain conscious until we get to Missouri, coz you're too stubborn to die before you see Robin again." Mary smiled to take the edge out the words.

"Oh, shut up," Mia replied, smiling back.

They drove for a while in silence.

"So, what made you call me?" Mary asked.

Mia hesitated before answering, contemplating being flip, but settling for the truth. "Everything in life is easier when you have a friend there for back-up," she said. "Even facing your loved ones."

"Don't I know it," Mary muttered, thinking of how many times Marshall had stopped her from trying to murder a family member. Then, "Oh, crap!"

"What's up?" Mia asked as she watched Mary fumble for her phone.

"I forgot to tell Marshall I was leaving town."

"The boyfriend that it's too sad and pathetic to tell me about?"

"Hardly. He's my partner."

"Ah, number two on my speed dial," Mia noted, recalling Mary's stern warning that if there was an emergency and Mary was unavailable, Marshall and Stan were the only other people she was to call.

Mary wasn't listening as she was waiting for Marshall to pick up. On the seventh ring he did.

"Hey," he said sleepily.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" Mary asked with a gentleness to her voice that Mia hadn't heard since the initial revelation of her dark secret.

"No," Marshall replied, oblivious to Mia's musings.

"Liar," Mary accused.

"Either way, what's up?"

Mary could hear Marshall moving around, probably searching for some sensible pants to put on just in case he had to leave the house.

"It's okay, Doofus," Mary told him, "you can leave your airplanes on." She didn't notice, or chose to ignore, the odd look Mia gave her as she eavesdropped on Mary's side of the conversation. "I'm taking Mia back to Kansas City to see her niece. I just wanted to let you know I won't be in the office in the morning."

"Okay, when are you due back?"

"Don't know. Tomorrow night or Wednesday morning. Not sure."

"Okay, I'll tell Stan in the morning. At least _you'll_ be well out of yelling range."

"Thanks, Marshall," Mary said before hanging up.

Mary dropped the phone onto the seat next to her. Mia stared out the window at the New Mexico night. Mary was right – there was something special about the sky here. She stared at the stars as they drove through the desert.

Mary let her mind wonder as she drove down the empty highway. Mia's comment about friends making life easier had struck a cord with her. It had taken her a long time to admit Marshall was her friend and even longer to realise she was his friend. How did she make his life easier? Other than the clean break with Raph a few months ago, she couldn't think of a single thing she had done for him. Well, maybe saving his dad counted, she mused. Even now, Marshall was preparing to face down Stan the following morning when he did her dirty work for her and tried to explain why she was suddenly AWOL, providing a security escort for a woman who wasn't even a witness.

_Mind you, _Mary thought, _the freak is probably looking forward to it judging by his amusement._

She had heard all of Marshall's sudden changes of mood in their short conversation: From tired and irritated when he answered the phone, shifting to concern when he realised who was calling, to amusement when she told him where she was going.

_No, that wasn't what had amused him. _

The thought came to her with startling clarity. She had obviously slipped into aphasic during the conversation and as she considered what they had each said, it dawned on her exactly which word she had substituted.

Mary shook her head slightly and glanced at Mia to see if she had noticed anything amiss. Mia was still watching the night fly past the window, content to enjoy the silence of the night. Mary was, for once, being allowed to continue her thoughts uninterrupted. She had committed the seventeen words she could no longer say to memory. She had asked her speech therapist about them and been told that if they hadn't come back with the rest of her speech, they probably weren't coming back. As a practical measure, Mary just avoided sentences with those words in or found alternatives. They weren't difficult to replace, but pajamas seemed to crop up in conversation more than the others. Especially when the conversation was with Marshall. She mouthed the word pajamas to herself, but had no way of knowing if she had got it right. Why that word was one of the few that she still mixed up she didn't know. Her best guess was that seeing Marshall's airplane pajamas on one too many witness escorts had scarred her in ways no therapy could cure.

In the black of the New Mexico night, she realised she no longer cared that she was still missing seventeen words. She was just grateful that that was all she was missing. The human brain was a fickle thing. Or so Marshall had insisted on telling her every time she got frustrated during the early stages of her recovery. As she glanced at Mia again to see if she had fallen asleep, Mary realised Marshall had been right. It was fickle enough that a tumor could grow with no outward signs. She would never have guessed that the woman next to her had a terminal brain tumor.

Mary couldn't imagine how she would deal if she was in Mia's situation, couldn't imagine how she would feel on finding out. She tried to imagine waiting patiently for some doctor, a specialist, someone you had had no contact with previously, to tell you whether you were going to live or die. She failed. She tried to pictuire how that conversation would go. How would you begin to break that news to someone? Or did the doctors even need to, she wondered. There were only two outcomes of the conversation, one of the few times life was black or white; long or short. Perhaps the doctors didn't need to say anything. Perhaps it was written on their faces. Or perhaps it wasn't like that at all.

"How did you find out about the tumor?" Mary asked, surprising Mia, as her curiosity got the better of her.

Mia glanced at Mary before returning to stare out the window as she answered, "I fainted one day in the kitchen. Robin found me and dialled 911. Do you know how scary it is to wake up in a hospital when the last thing you remember was baking bread?"

"I think I can imagine. Well, not the baking bread part."

Mia laughed, then turned serious, "I doubt you can. It's not just the fact you're in a different place suddenly, the really scary part is knowing there's something wrong with you, but not knowing what. Knowing there's something wrong, but not being able to see it. There's no physical injury that you can point at and say, 'Here, fix this.' Instead there's this thing growing inside you, stealing parts of you day by day. And you have no idea how it's going to affect you. That's the thing that scared me most, the bit no one can imagine – the anticipation of the loss of self."

After a while, Mary said quietly, "I don't need to imagine."

Mia turned in her seat to face Mary. "What do you mean?" she asked when she realised Mary was serious.

"We're more alike than you realise."

"Don't tell me you have a brain tumor too. What are the chances?" Mia asked with a grin, throwing her hands up in the air dramatically.

"Not quite," Mary said. She shifted uncomfortably. She hadn't told anyone about her aphasia. She wasn't sure why, but suspected her reasons matched Mia's – she didn't want to have to see the pity in other people's eyes. Plus, other than conversations with Marshall, she hadn't had a lapse in several months, so there'd been no reason to bring it up.

Mary glanced over at the woman beside her and saw Mia waiting patiently for her to continue.

"I got shot a while ago." She took a deep breath. "I was in a coma and when I woke up, I'd lost my ability to understand...well, pretty much everything actually." She looked at Mia again and saw no pity, only interest in her expression. "I had...have aphasia." She paused again to gather herself. "I can remember laying in the hospital bed being surrounded by people, my family, while they were talking to me. But I didn't understand what they were saying. Not just that I didn't recognize the words, but I didn't even know what words were. That was the scariest few days of my life."

"What happened?"

Mary shook her head to clear it of the haunting memories. "My understanding came back first. But I couldn't speak properly, not for ages. I sounded like I'd had a stroke and I'd mix up words. My family tried but they couldn't understand me, which made me frustrated, which made me worse."

"How did you get through?"

"Marshall."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he is to me what Robin is to you. Except not related, coz that would be weird," Mary explained, trying to lighten the mood.

"How did he get you through?" Mia asked, too interested in Mary's story to let her deflect with a weak joke.

Mary was silent for a long while before answering. "He understood me. When I was talking jibberish, he understood." Mary's lips twitched into a smile as she said, "Hell, before that even. When I'd just woken up and didn't even know that something was wrong, that something was missing, he knew. He told me.

"I remember him sitting next to my bed and putting his feet up. I don't know, but something about the way he sat told me it would be okay."

Mary realised that the clarity of the picture of Marshall sitting by her bed was due to the frequency with which she recalled the image. She had caught herself imagining Marshall sitting in her room on several occasions after Raph had left and she couldn't sleep. At first she had told herself it was just because she was lonely, but she had come to rely on the thought of Marshall watching over her without realising it. Now, she clung to that memory like she had clung to her dad's letters not so long ago. Each night she would allow it to run through her mind, letting the sense of peace it created wash over her as she drifted off to sleep.

Even as she recalled the memory for Mia, she could feel the calmness settle over her. Mia also noticed the change. Gone was the tenseness and constant motion, the focus and drive that Mary never seemed to be without. Slowly it was replaced with a wistfulness and a vulnerable air as a small smile played around the corners of Mary's mouth.

"What's the best thing about him?" Mia asked, intrigued as to what could make Mary smile like that.

Mary's half smile faded as she considered her answer. There were so many good things about Marshall, she didn't know how to begin to answer. Mia waited for her answer patiently.

Finally Mary said, "He makes me see things differently. He makes me see _myself_ differently. He always expects more of me, expects me to rise to a higher standard. Nobody ever expected anything of me before."

Mia didn't say anything, but Mary could feel her curiosity. She glanced in her direction and offered a small smile.

"I was always being told I would never amount to anything. That I'd end up like my mom. Or worse. Sometimes I think the only reason I have a career now is because I was desperate to prove them wrong."

Mia noticed Mary's mood being to turn melancholy and decided to lighten the mood. "Oh, please," she said, laying the scorn on thick but with a healthy dose of amusement underneath. "Don't give me that 'No one ever believed in me,' beating-all-the-odds crap! You can't even tell people what you do, so don't try to convince me that's why you do this."

Mary laughed. "You're right, it's not why I do it. But I still get satisfaction from knowing that I proved my teachers wrong, even if they don't."

They lapsed into silence for a minute, until Mary chuckled quietly to herself.

"What?" Mia asked, not wanting to be left out.

"I was just thinking, if Marshall was here, he'd be explaining how a contrary nature indicates I drank too much milk as a child or telling us that the word contrary has its roots in Old Norse and actually refers to a type of clay that is difficult to work or something else equally obscure and ridiculous," Mary explained without pausing for breath.

"He sounds like a hoot. When do I get to meet him?"

"When we get back I'll introduce you and tell him you like origami. Then we'll see if you still think he's a hoot."

"Why do I sense this is some kind of punishment?"

Mary didn't say anything, just shot Mia a grin.

They drove in silence for a while, then Mia said, "You should tell him."

"Tell him what?"

"That you appreciate him. That you're glad he was there for you when you needed him. That you love him. Hell, I don't know! Tell him whatever you want, just tell him. Before it's too late." The last sentence was barely more than a whisper.

Mary thought for a few moments, then said dismissively, "We don't really talk about what happened after I was shot. It's kinda hard to work into casual conversation."

"So?"

Mary looked at Mia, her face a complex mixture of confusion and disbelief at what Mia was suggesting.

"Just call him and tell him. Call him now," Mia pushed. "The night is the perfect time for confessions that you can't say in the day."

Mary laughed, "You're crazy. And Marshall would think I'd lost it if I...Mia? Mia, what are you doing?" Mary asked with rising panic as Mia grabbed her phone off the seat and started scrolling through the options.

"Well, lookee here. Some guy called Marshall is eight of your last ten calls. Mary, have you been holding out on me?" Mia asked with girlish glee as she fended off Mary's attempt to retrieve her phone. "What does this button here do?...Whoops!"

"Mia!" Mary growled as Mia handed the phone back just in time for Mary to hear Marshall on the other end of the line.

"Mary?" came the faint voice of her partner.

She put the phone to her ear and tried to ignore Mia mouthing, 'Tell him,' to her.

"Hi, Marshall."

"What's up? You can't be in trouble already, you only left town two hours ago."

"I'm fine," she told him, knowing his joke hid concern at her late night call. Mary glared at Mia as she took a deep breath. She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't think of how to begin.

"Mare?" Marshall pushed, concern rising.

Mary could hear him moving about and the rustling of what sounded like bedsheets. She blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. "I like that we talk about airplanes a lot."

"Huh?" was Marshall's eloquent reply to the seeming non sequitur.

As the details of her earlier conversation returned to her, Mary took another breath and tried again. "I like that you always understand me, even when my aphasia is bad. I don't think I ever thanked you for that, for being patient with me."

"What's brought this on, Mare?"

"Talking to Mia."

"And what is it about spending time with Mia that makes you so grateful for my patience? Is she less attuned to your own special brand of wit and sarcasm …?" Marshall drawled the question slowly, measuring how long it would take until Mary cut him off. It didn't take long.

"I'm trying to be serious here, Marshall." Mary's frustration was rising, a sure sign she was feeling uncomfortable.

"I know," he said, managing to diffuse Mary's imminent explosion with two words. "And I like that we talk about airplanes a lot too. I like talking about you and your pajamas even more..."

The suggestive tone made Mary hesitate. She thought about flirting back, but one glance at Mia reminded her of the purpose of the call and she said briskly, "Well, whatever we're talking about, you always seem to know what I need." She paused as she considered what she had just said. "How do you do that, by the way?"

"Do what?"

"Always know what I need."

"I know you," came Marshall's simple yet complex reply.

"Yes, you do," Mary agreed. "And yet you're still my friend."

"Of course I am, Mare. You know what they say." He paused to give Mary time to ask the inevitable question.

She played her role. "What do they say?"

"They say, 'A friend is someone who knows all about you, and still likes you'."

"That's certainly true for us." Mary paused before admitting, "I like you too. I'm just not sure I know you as well as you know me."

"Of course you do."

"Don't bet on it," Mary muttered. "I didn't even know you didn't like fishing."

"Are you still hung up on that?" Marshall chuckled. "I don't care whether you know my every like and dislike. You get me in ways no one else does. _That's_ what matters to me."

"Yeah, but if I didn't know something simple like that, I can't help but wonder what else I don't know about you."

"So, ask me. I'll tell you whatever you want to know. I shall be your own personal oracle, together we shall recreate Delphi!" Marshall lightened the tone with his mention of Ancient Greece.

Mary chuckled, not fully understanding the reference, but knowing that Marshall would have a stream of trivia at hand to edge the conversation back onto safer ground if need be.

"Do I get three wishes?" she asked

"That's genies, not oracles. Oracles are prophets or priestess thought to be the source of all knowledge. In reality their prophesies were worded so vaguely that they could be interpreted in many ways ensuring the oracle was never wrong, only the interpretation! Genies, on the other hand, traditionally grant wishes."

"I know what an oracle is, Moron. Three questions, then. Don't these thing normally come in threes?"

"Very well, I shall grant you three questions," Marshall pronounced in an overly serious voice that made Mary giggle.

"And three simple, easy-to-understand answers? No ambiguity?" Mary clarified before she agreed.

"Yes."

Mary remained silent for several seconds. Marshall wondered if she was still there but could faintly make out her breathing on the other end of the line. He guessed she was taking her time to think up the most probing or embarrassing question she could come up with. _This should be fun_, he thought as he shifted into a more comfortable position, settling in for a long wait.

When no question was forthcoming after a few more minutes, he was forced to ask, "Was that one of them?"

"No," Mary snapped.

She had been trying to think of something to ask but her brain had refused to cooperate. She couldn't think of a single thing to ask and as the silence had dragged on, she had found herself struggling to recall anything, any fact, big or small, interesting or mundane, about her partner that she could follow up on. As the silence grew, Mary could feel the weight of Marshall's expectation pressing down on her. The longer it took her to ask her first question, the better he was expecting it to be and the more Mary could see her own failure as a friend. Marshall had somehow sensed her rising panic and had taken it on himself to end the downward spiral. She was grateful, but the original problem remained.

Marshall shifted position again and Mary heard the faint rustling noise she had heard before. Once more it inspired her to say the first thing that came to mind. "Are you in bed?"

There was a slightly stunned silence from Marshall's end of the line, then as he recalled his promise to answer without ambiguity, said, "Yes."

"Are you alone?"

"Yes. Why wouldn't I be?" Marshall couldn't resist a follow up question of his own to see if the current line of questioning was motivated by jealousy.

"I don't know," Mary huffed. "You're always telling me you have a life outside work and don't want to subject any women you meet to my winning abrasiveness, so I thought..."

Mary didn't finish and Marshall didn't push her to. He had heard enough to confirm his suspicions. The silence extended into a minute as Mary considered her wasted first two questions and became determined not to waste the the final question.

Finally she asked, "What good do I bring to your life?"

Marshall paused to consider his answer, but not as long as Mary had expected him to. "You make me happy. Especially when you're happy."

"Which is never," Mary pointed out, having been told it often enough to believe it.

"Maybe," he admitted, "or maybe that just makes the times you are happy all the more special."

"Still, it doesn't seem like enough."

"Some days it is, some days it isn't," Marshall said quietly.

Mary was shocked to hear the honesty in his voice; a plain statement of fact.

"What can I do on the days it isn't?" she asked, suddenly put in mind of a day she had found a letter on his desk.

Mary could almost hear Marshall's sad smile over the phone.

"Nothing," he told her. "I just …."

"You just, what?" Mary asked gently when it was clear that Marshall wasn't going to finish his sentence.

"I just wish you would let yourself be happy more often. I wish you didn't feel like you should be miserable because you don't deserve happiness. Everyone deserves happiness, Mare, even you. Especially you," he added in a whisper.

Mary was silent as she considered his words. Even when she was asking how she could be a better friend to him, he replied with wanting more for her. "I can't change overnight, Marshall," she admitted.

"I know, I'd just like to see you open yourself to the possibility of something more or at least to consider the possibility that there is something more."

"I'll think about it," Mary conceded, then with more determination, "I'll try."

"That's all I ask. Now, is there anything else I can do for you this evening?" Marshall asked, making Mary smile at his businesslike tone.

She glanced over at Mia, who was either asleep or being polite and faking it. Either way, Mary still had a long drive ahead and didn't feel like spending all of it in silence.

"Tell me about Delphi," she said, "and make it interesting or there's a good chance I'll fall asleep at the wheel and die in a fireball when I crash into a truck."

Marshall shifted in bed again as he considered whether to begin with the history of the Pythia at Delphi or to jump straight in with the prophesy that had preceded the battle of Thermopylae. With Mary, there was no contest.

* * *

**AN#2:** I'm thinking about changing the name of this story (assuming ff dot net will let me). Ten Stages made sense when I was planning to publish each of the three sections as separate stories with ten chapters in each, but it doesn't fit any more. If anyone has any strong feelings either way about me changing the title to The Three Stages of Awakening, speak now.


	28. Chapter 28

"Oh, and one more thing. She absolutely cannot grasp the lifeblood of your repartee – bitter sarcasm – so every second you're with her try being someone other than who you actually are."

"Oooo...Role play, my favorite."

Mary collapsed forward, resting her head on her arms in mock despair. A few seconds later she was glad her family's flair for the dramatic hadn't passed her by as her face was concealed from Marshall when the tone and the hurt of his statement sunk in: He wanted her to be someone else.

_I thought he liked me as I am_, she thought as Marshall droned on about Asperger's._ I thought he was the only one that accepted me as I am, has never asked me to change, and now, he's telling me he wants me to be someone else. Anybody else. What happened to a friend is someone who knows all about you and still likes you?_

She was lost in her thoughts when she felt pressure on her arm just above her elbow. Her head shot up and she saw Marshall's hand resting lightly on her arm. She didn't hide her surprise at the unsolicited touch.

"Hey, what's up?" Marshall asked, "Where did you go?"

"What? I was listening."

"No, you weren't," Marshall said. The amusement in his voice effectively masked his concern. "I just told you Asperger's sufferers are prone to monologuing about topics of no interest to their listeners and there was no comeback. What's up?"

"What's up with me?" Mary was as surprised as Marshall at sharpness in her voice as she rounded on him. "What's up with you? You kept cutting me off in there and you're being more preachy than normal and where the hell do you get off telling me to be someone else?" She pointed out each fault, her voice getting louder with each one.

"What?" Marshall blinked in confusion.

"Just now you told me to be anyone but myself," Mary clarified.

"For your witness' sake. What the hell, Mary?"

Mary regarded him uneasily, almost ready to back down but not quite. Maybe he hadn't meant it as it had sounded. But there had been something in the way he had said it that had set off her aphasic-spider sense and she had reacted on a similar emotional level.

"Do you honestly think that I would have been your partner for this long if I didn't find every aspect of your personality charming?"

The question was asked with just enough suggestion and sarcasm mingled together to make Mary relax slightly and almost smile. Maybe her spider sense had been wrong.

"Plus, if we're going to be role playing," Marshall continued, "I have some very specific suggestions as to who you could be..."

Mary chuckled. "Really? Who's that?" she flirted back, cocking her head suggestively, without thinking.

"Well..." he drawled slowly, "...there's a certain poster in a certain someone's office that could provide inspiration."

Mary thought for a moment before the poster celebrating the women Marshals through the years came to mind. She laughed. "God, Marshall, are you so vanilla that you can't even come up with a more exciting fantasy than a female Marshal?"

"Some of those women were fierce!" he defended himself and his choice. "I bet they were a wild ride. They certainly would be if they were anything like some of the present-day women Marshals. Plus, they had cowboy boots."

"Ah, now we're getting down to it!" Mary teased. "What is it with you and cowboy boots?"

"You know, the newer, roper style of boot was designed to be practical both on horseback and on foot to suit the needs of the the modern cowboy at rodeos where they have to run to tie the roped calf."

Mary shook her head, knowing she would never find out what was behind his cowboy boot fixation. Every time she had asked him about it over the course of their partnership, he had replied with a fact about cowboy boots or footwear in general until it had become a game between them. It was one of the questions she had asked when her aphasia-induced reading of tone and emotion was at its height. She had hoped to catch him in a lie, but he had evaded the truth with facts like the one he had just shared.

"Are you alright?" Mary asked suddenly.

Marshall looked at her, confused as to what had prompted her question. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"You seem..." Mary waved her hand, gesturing in his direction vaguely, "...off."

Marshall raised an eyebrow at her.

Mary studied him a moment, trying to pinpoint what was off about him. "You snapped at me earlier and just then you seemed sad."

Marshall sat thoughtfully for a moment, considering Mary's implied question. "I was thinking about my dad," he admitted.

"And earlier?" Mary wasn't willing to let him off the hook without digging a little. She could have sworn that there had been an undercurrent earlier, one that she was struggling to trace the source of and she hated not knowing. If something was up with Marshall, she needed to know to be the better friend she had promised to be.

"I didn't snap at you, Mare," he said wearily, "If I did, it was unintentional and I apologize."

She couldn't detect anything but the truth from him. Still, she had one last nagging doubt to settle.

"You don't want me to be someone else?" she asked in a small voice.

"Me? No. But Judy may need you to be someone else, just for a while." He smiled reassuringly at her.

Mary scoffed and glanced into the conference room where her witness still sat as Marshall returned to the original topic of conversation.

"She needs someone who won't add to her anxiety in what will already be a stressful situation for her. Someone that will listen to her concerns and make allowances for them, not dismiss them out of hand. You know, just pretend to be me. And if at any point the real Mary begins to surface, take a deep breath, count to ten, and do the opposite of whatever you would usually do." Marshall was grinning at Mary when he finished, waiting with keen anticipation for her insulting response.

"So I should pretend to be a girl for a while?" Mary's comeback was weak as she tried to remember Marshall's instructions in case they came in useful. Now that she had established that he was only concerned with her witness and didn't want her to change who she fundamentally was, she was more willing to listen to his advice.

As Marshall moved back to his desk to find out some more information on Suarez, Mary wondered about her reaction to his words earlier – it had felt the same as it had when her aphasia was bad – the knowledge of the emotions behind the words had just appeared in her head. But as far as she could tell, for the first time, her aphasia-spider sense had been wrong. Her reaction had been without cause; Marshall had been genuinely surprised at her response. Perhaps she had been wrong, perhaps it hadn't been her aphasia after all. Perhaps her aphasia was gone and she had just reacted badly to a perceived slight. God knows, she had done that often enough before getting shot. Perhaps Marshall had been right when he said he hadn't intended to snap at her and she was reading too much into it. Everything he had said had made sense and her aphasia hadn't indicated any hidden emotions in the rest of the conversation. But, then again, if it was gone, how would she know?

Still, she reasoned, she knew her partner, aphasia or no. She had learnt to read him over the years and she didn't need her aphasia to know that he hadn't lied to her about being content with her the way she was.

_He only told me to be someone else to help me keep my witness safe_, she told herself with more conviction.

As she looked into the conference room once more and saw Judy failing to interact with the Marshal stationed there, she realised that he was probably right. He usually was. He had warned her about that the first day they had met. She had ignored him, thinking it was an idle boast, but it hadn't taken long before she had realised that he was right about that too.

xxx

"_What are you doing?" Mary asked, idly curious. She peered over Marshall's shoulder to see what he was reading._

"_I'm checking Larry's phone records."_

_Mary frowned. "Is that standard procedure? To check them for this long?"_

_Marshall didn't reply but, after a year of working together, Mary was getting to know him and was learning to read his non-verbal answers. _

"_Ah," she sighed as she returned to her desk._

_She let him read in silence for a moment before asking, "Is this because he didn't laugh at your joke?"_

_Marshall glanced at her and she had her answer._

"_Jesus, Marshall, will you stop banging on about that stupid joke. He didn't laugh because it wasn't funny!"_

_Actually, it had been funny, it had just taken Mary an hour online and another hour in a bookstore looking up advanced chemical concepts to get why._

"_It's not that he didn't laugh, although it does rankle that I wasted some of my best material on him, it's that he seemed to have no comprehension of ..." he tailed off, unable to put his nagging unease about his witness into words._

_The man in question had been arrested in a raid on a meth lab. He had eventually admitted to being the chemist in charge and had agreed to testify about those in the supply and distribution chains. The local DA thought he was getting a good deal – one slightly geeky, down-on-his-luck chemist free to roam the streets while he put away several major drug traffickers. Marshall wasn't convinced. Something wasn't quite right about the situation so he'd spent the last six months keeping a closer than usual eye on Larry. He thought he was being discrete in his surveillance, but it seemed he had underestimated Mary's need to know everything._

_Mary was surprised at her partner's level of suspicion about Larry. He didn't usually violate his witnesses' privacy without reason. He had chastised her several times about the vigour with which she delved into her witnesses' personal details. Marshall believed that even witnesses had a right to privacy if it didn't jeopardize their security. They were innocent until proven guilty, he had told her on several occasions. Mary took the attitude that they were guilty until proven guilty._

_If Marshall thought Larry was guilty of something, then he probably was, Mary decided. She suppressed a smile as she recalled what Marshall had told her the first day they met. _

"_You're hilarious," she had spat sarcastically._

"_And right," he had shot back. "The sooner you get used to both, the better."_

_Infuriatingly, he had been right on both counts._

_Mary watched him a while longer._

"_Is that this month's phone records?" she asked, an idea forming._

"_Yeah." There was curiosity in Marshall's tone about where her thoughts were heading._

"_That's a lot of phone calls for someone fairly new in town." She nodded toward the three pages of phone numbers that Marshall was poring through. "If you were trying to hide one specific call, you might make a lot of random calls ..."_

_Marshall looked at the phone records anew._

"_But which one was he trying to hide?"_

_Three days later, after checking every number on the list, Larry was relocated. _

_He was joined in his new location by his younger sister – the chemist who had provided the know-how and training for the operation – she had even laughed at Marshall's joke as they handed Larry over to his and his sister's new Marshals._

_Marshall had been right to be suspicious and Mary had stopped questioning his hunches._

xxx

"You were wrong, by the way," Mary said as she stole another empanada from Marshall's plate.

Marshall looked up.

"About Judy," she expanded, "She didn't need me to be someone else. She needed me to be me."

Marshall nodded. "So the trial went okay, then?"

"Yeah, if you call Judy refusing to testify once she found out that Larry wouldn't be her friend if she did, an incompetent Inspector who lost my witness, and a would-be assassin that got too close to my witness for comfort thanks to the aforementioned friend."

Marshall was concerned by the mention of a hit-man, but the enthusiasm with which Mary was attacking the pastry assured him that she was okay.

"Still, Larry came through in the end. He told us where to find Judy so we could get to her in time." Mary slowed her eating slightly to add, "Perhaps their friendship wasn't a complete sham."

They both fell silent as they ate.

"Do you ever wonder what the insides of peoples brains look like?" Mary asked out of the blue.

"I take it we're not talking about vivisection," Marshall asked, knowing that he would be ignored.

"I look at Judy and I imagine her brain as all these tidy little compartments," Mary explained. "Math and numbers go here, emotions live in this little lock-box. Lying is in a 'Bad' compartment. Friends and everything associated with them are neatly tucked into a compartment labelled 'Good'. Including lying for a friend." She paused. "We had to do some mental gymnastics to move Larry from the friend column to the 'person I used to be friends with' column, but I think we did it."

Marshall watched and listened in silence as she spoke, he noticed how she indicated the various compartments and their relative separations. He also understood all the things she didn't say.

"It must be nice to be so tidy, so ordered," Mary said wistfully.

"So black and white?"

"Yeah." Mary looked over at Marshall.

"With no room for emotion?" he asked quietly.

Mary didn't reply instantly, or directly.

"When I imagine my brain," she said slowly, "I can barely find it under piles of crap. There's no little neat compartments; there's only huge sections taped off with crime scene tape and big warning signs everywhere saying 'Do not enter'. And every time I get hurt, I edge open a door, throw the hurt in and hope I don't get buried under all the past crap as it tries to escape. So yeah, I'd trade some of my room for emotion for neat compartments and the ability to remember more that just yours and my phone numbers."

Mary fiddled with the half eaten empanada in her hand, tearing off little pieces and eating them. She addressed the empanada as she said, "Sometimes I think that's what the aphasia was – my brain refiling words so that it could make more space for the hurt. And while the refiling was going on some words got lost or misfiled."

She finally looked at Marshall, who had a thoughtful expression on his face.

"What?" she said.

Marshall understood Mary's desire for order and her need to impose it on the world wherever she could. But he couldn't agree with her.

He shook his head slowly. "The grey areas in life are the interesting ones. If everything was ordered...There'd be no grey areas, no messy sections where people like you and I live and work and dare I say, thrive.

"And I don't see you as buried under a pile of crap behind big 'Do not enter' signs. I see you more as a secret garden. One that's been forgotten for years. Left to grow wild through neglect and inattention, overgrown with weeds and thorns. A place where only the sturdiest and most tenacious plants can grow. Plants all the more beautiful due to their unlikely location and the odds they had to overcome in order to flourish. Beauty that's just waiting to be discovered by someone brave enough to fight a path through the thorns."

"They'd have to be very brave. Or desperate," Mary added morosely.

"Or patient."

Mary looked at him sharply. Of all the things she had expected him to say, that wasn't one of them. It was rare that Marshall's responses surprised her any more and she peered at him intently to work out where he was coming from. Instead, she found something in his eyes that made her look away. Something she wasn't ready to see.

"I'm not sure I want to know the answer to this, but what do you think the inside of my brain looks like?" Marshall asked, deliberately keeping his tone light. He had seen Mary's sudden need to be somewhere else and hid his disappointment in an effort to prolong the moment they were having.

Mary hesitated – the desire to run was still strong. Then the image of the inside of Marshall's brain made her smile and she relaxed back into her seat.

"You brain is like a library," she told him, still smiling. "Not a public library, but one of those in a private home with leather-bound books and the floor-to-ceiling shelves and the little ladders so you can get to the top shelves." She closed her eyes as she pictured it. "There's order, but not the kind of order where if you put a book back in the wrong place you get yelled at. There are books stacked on tables and in piles on the floor and one of those high backed chairs that you can read in. It's warm and comfortable." Her eyes snapped open suddenly and she pinned Marshall with an amused glare. "Actually, it looks a lot like the library in _Beauty and the Beast_."

"The Disney movie?" Marshall clarified.

Mary nodded.

"So the inside of my brain is like a Disney movie?" he reflected, thoughtfully, aware of Mary's amusement. "Which one of us is the Beauty and which is the Beast, do you think?"

"I think that's obvious," Mary said, well aware of her reputation.

"You're right, it was a stupid question. But at least I get to turn into a prince at the end," Marshall said as he stood to clear the remains of the empanadas.

Mary watched him go and permitted herself a small smile as his unexpected compliment registered.

* * *

**AN:** The consensus on the name change seems to be: Leave it as it is. So I will. (Sorry BuJyo, we were outvoted). There's now a week until the S4 premier. Can I get the final chapter written before it airs? There's only one way to find out...Stay tuned!


	29. Chapter 29

**AN:** Made it! With over a day to spare.

* * *

Maybe Stan was right, Mary mused.

Maybe she could do with a vacation. She had barely stopped for the last couple of months. Since escorting Judy to Minneapolis and back, Mary's life had settled into a not-so-predictable routine. Bullying Walter into shape and convincing him to act like a model witness, if only for a while, had taken all of her energy. Then, dealing with the bureaucracy and paperwork surrounding his relocation had kept her busy until the next emergency had arisen. That had been a teenage girl and a complicated arrangement of parental visitations. Mary had had no time to think during that time. She'd had no time to contemplate Mia's death. No time to analyze the conversation she'd had with Marshall and the subtle change in their relationship over the last few months.

Now she thought about it, it had been like that for most of the year. She hadn't been lying when she had told Marshall it had been a brutal year. It had. And the one before that hadn't exactly been a picnic. Or the one before that.

Tonight, though, she was grateful for the sudden influx of Marshals from Phoenix as it guaranteed her an evening off. Finally she had some time to herself. She poured herself a glass of wine and stretched out on the sofa. She sighed contentedly as she sipped the wine in her silent house and tried to recall the last time she had had an evening completely free of commitments, chores, errands or other responsibilities.

The closest she could come was the two weeks she had spent at Marshall's. The first week, when she had shrugged off her speech therapy sessions, had been a new and unusual experience for her – It was the first time she had nothing to do. And she hadn't found it unpleasant. She had had time to read and had spent one glorious day in bed.

If she took a vacation, she could revisit the the inactivity of that week. This time without the guilt of missing speech therapy.

_"Bullshit!" Marshall said. "You wouldn't be reading about the history of the Marshal Service if you truly meant to give it up, so don't give me that crap. You're still a US Marshal. And US Marshals don't spend all day laying in bed."_

As Mary recalled Marshall's reaction to her idleness, she was forced to revise her assessment of that week. It hadn't been the relaxing period she was attempting to paint it as in her mind. It had been painful and cowardly. She had attempted to hide from the world only to find herself bored. She had only picked up Marshall's books out of boredom and the need to escape from her speech impediment. True, she had found herself enjoying the book more than anticipated, but since leaving Marshall's all those months ago and returning to work, she hadn't felt the inclination or had the time to read for pleasure.

Maybe she could read if she took a vacation, she speculated.

Other than that, she couldn't think what she would do on a vacation. What did other people do? she wondered. Marshall visited his family when he took vacation, she knew that, but it didn't help her. She thought back to the FTF team she used to work with and tried to recall any conversations she'd had with them about vacations. Something about seeing friends came to mind. Had they gone to see their friends? Like her family, all her friends were in Albuquerque, so that didn't help her either. Maybe they went away with their friends. Mary considered this option. That didn't sound too bad. She filed the thought away for later and picked up the top brochure from the box Jinx had left "just in case". She put it back after only a cursory glance. She didn't need to see more than the cover to know that a cruise wasn't for her.

"_What do you need?"_

Marshall's voice echoed in her mind, always asking the pertinent question. He had asked her the same question many times over the years. It was always phrased differently, but the sentiment behind the words was always the first time he had asked her, she had answered.

"_What do you need me to do?" he asked._

_Mary had heard similar offers before and knew they were only made out of politeness. Things must be looking bad if her new partner was being polite to her, he hadn't bothered up to this point in the six months they had been working together. Things had been going from bad to worse all day: Her idiot witnesses had only just thought to inform her that their teenage daughter had gone missing three days ago. If that wasn't bad enough, her new-in-town boyfriend was also missing. It didn't take a genius to figure out they had run off together and it had already been a long day trying to find them. Despite the late hour, Mary wasn't prepared to stop looking. This was the first real problem she'd had since joining witsec and she felt responsible for Jennifer's safety. And now her partner was asking her a polite yet pointless question._

"_I need a full threat assessment on the Harpers, I need to know where Thomas was before he moved here and if he has a record or connections to the Kincaid brothers, I need to call every motel in Albuquerque and find out if Jennifer has been there in the last three days, and I need some apple pie and a coffee from Joe's as I haven't eaten since breakfast." Mary rattled off the list quickly, more to clarify to herself what she needed to do than because she expected Marshall to actually do any of it. Nothing had every come of the offers of assistance before, so she wasn't holding her breath for help on this one._

"_In that order?" Marshall asked._

"_No, Numbnuts, in whatever order gets my witness' kid back quickest," Mary snapped._

"_So pie first then?" Marshall asked as he scooped his jacket off the back of the chair and strode out the office. _

_Mary hadn't expected to see him before morning, but twenty minutes later he had returned with pie and coffee for two and began phoning all the local motels until they had a lead._

Marshall had delivered that night and every time since. The next time he had asked her what she needed, she had replied with a flippant request for a plumber that didn't rip her off and try to peer down her top every time she called them out. The following day there was a business card tucked between the keys of her keyboard when she entered the office. That was when she realised that Marshall's offers weren't to be taken lightly. Subsequent offers were turned down. She was uncomfortable asking for help and relying on others, so she dismissed his offers with a smile and an insult, figuring he would get bored and stop asking. He didn't. At some point, the mere offer was enough for both of them. Marshall accepted the fact that if Mary truly needed something she couldn't provide for herself, or more often for her witnesses, she would say. Mary trusted that on the rare occasion she did tell him what she needed, he would move Heaven and Earth to get it for her. Even if it meant risking his career or breaking the law.

From him, she had learnt the effectiveness of such a simple and direct question when it felt like the world was against you. She had used it several times with her witnesses and it always produced results.

"_Tell me what you need," she told Sabrina as they sat in the conference room. _

_The teenager stared at her a moment before opening up and requesting a phone call to her mom. Mary smiled quietly to herself as she went to set up the secure line._

But, for all the times Marshall had asked that question, she had only asked him it once.

"_What can I do on the days it isn't enough?"_

The conversation with Mia had forced her to consolidate her thinking about Marshall and her aphasia. She had realised that the coincidence of Marshall always being around when she was relaxed enough to slip into aphasic was no coincidence. There was something about his presence that made her relax. There was something about his quiet understanding that made her feel accepted. She knew that now. Mia had shown her that.

She realised that, like her friendship with Marshall, her too-short friendship with Mia had also made her see things differently. Mia's outlook on life had been refreshing rather than the trite "Live every day as if it's your last" attitude that seemed compulsory after a near-death experience. Mary still didn't understand Mia's lack of anger at her situation. If it had been Mary, she would have been pissed. Had been pissed, she corrected herself. She was still pissed at the world for the events that had led to her aphasia, the aphasia itself, and the events the aphasia had caused. She had traced the roots of Raph leaving back to her aphasia through a twisted and torturous route that wasn't completely free of logic.

Mia had shown her how to let go of some of her anger. She was still working on it, but now she no longer instantly thought of all the bad things that had occurred because if her injury. Now, the first thing that came to mind was the image of Marshall, eyes alight as he tried to puzzle out what she meant. She had found a way to be grateful to the aphasia for bringing her and Marshall closer and making her aware of how much she needed and appreciated him. She couldn't quite go as far as Mia and forgive everything that had happened to her. She still apportioned the blame fairly; Carmello, for shooting her; the Universe/fate, for the aphasia; the aphasia, for Raph leaving. That was one point she and Mia would never agree on.

Despite their inability to agree on that point, the lengths Mia was willing to go to for her family had been something that Mary could empathize with. From the stories Mia had told her, Robin was as much Mia's daughter as her sister Trish's. Mia had told her of the regular family dinners with everybody seated at the same table night after night. Those dinners had defined Mia just as the lack of family dinners in Mary's life had defined her.

Knowing how important Mia's family was to her, Mary admired her strength in choosing to give them up – severing all ties to the people that had known her all her life in order to set Robin the example that a different life was possible. She had chosen to give up her family at a time when most people would need their family most. Not many people would be able to understand the choice she had made, but Mary could all too easily. She knew that while it was a difficult decision, there was also a sense of relief associated with leaving a demanding and domineering family behind. She could also understand the guilt that came with that peace. If she were dying, she felt certain she wouldn't want her family fussing around her. And with that self-knowledge came the familiar guilt attached to thoughts of leaving her family behind.

As Mary refilled her wine glass, she tried to tell herself it was stupid feeling guilty over a hypothetical choice that may never be required. But in her heart, she knew that she had already faced that decision and made that very choice. She had chosen Marshall over her family for the period of her recovery. She justified it by extending her definition of family, looking beyond those across the dinner table to the figure that was always in the background.

The only problem with the analogy, Mary thought, was that she wasn't sure which familial position Marshall filled. His constant presence denied him the role of father figure, who in Mary's world was always absent. She was just as uncomfortable assigning him the role of brother. In the same way she couldn't grasp the concept of a present father, she also couldn't imagine what a sibling that could take care of themselves would be like.

Yet brother was the closest to his actual role in her life. Even Marshall's dad had thought so.

_"They say friends are the family you would choose if you could choose your family. I can see Marshall chooses his friends wisely. I'd be proud to have you as a daughter." _

She wondered what it would have been like to grow up in the Mann household. She wondered if she would have been held to the same standards as Marshall and his brothers had and if she would have lived up to those expectations. Then she considered that, as the only girl in the family, she might have been spoiled and doted on by her parents. She mulled over the idea that maybe Seth regretted not having a daughter and would accept her as the closest substitute. If that was the case, it occurred to her that maybe Seth had missed a couple of words off the end of his sentence. Perhaps he had meant daughter-in-law but hadn't been sure how Mary and Marshall's relationship stood. It seemed Marshall really didn't talk to his dad about anything of substance.

Mary contemplated Marshall and his daddy issues while she made herself some dinner. As she sat back on the sofa, dinner in hand, her thoughts turned to another man with daddy issues.

Faber.

The man was an emotional mess, she knew that, yet the way he had pursued her, even going so far as to deliver witnesses personally to Albuquerque when they could have been relocated in one of a hundred other cities, held a certain appeal. Perhaps she was just attracted to needy men, she mused. She had thought she had dismissed him from her mind after his week in Albuquerque, but her reluctance to open the Faber wine to toast Brandi's moving out had proved otherwise.

Back then, she had turned him down as her recent split with Raph had meant she wasn't ready to deal with someone with as much emotional baggage as her. But seeing him again as he escorted Gabe to his new home had reawakened something in her. They had flirted and she had been reminded of his quick, dry wit. She enjoyed the challenge of matching wits with him and the way he didn't back down from her. His refusal to stop calling her Kitten was evidence of that.

She wondered if he was the someone she should be looking for. She recognised that any relationship with him would be unlike the one she had had with Raph. That had been tidy: They had both known their roles, even if Raph chafed in his every so often. It wouldn't be like that with Faber. They would constantly be fighting for dominance in the relationship and their combined parent and commitment issues would guarantee the relationship would be messy.

Maybe it was time to get back on the horse, Mary reflected.

If so, the question then was, did she find a nice tame horse that would be easy but dull to ride in order to get her confidence back, or did she take Faber up on his offer and go for a thrilling but potentially short ride with a higher risk of getting hurt.

Unbidden, the image of Bobby D on horseback, trailing a diamond smuggler after him, came to mind. She grinned as she recalled his casual greeting as he rode past and Marshall's open admiration. The grin grew into a full smile as she remembered that that wasn't all Marshall had openly admired that night.

No matter how much she had asked, prodded, cajoled, Marshall wouldn't admit to wanting to throw down with her that night beyond his, "I'm a guy, it's what we do."

The man who would do anything for her simply refused to answer her questions and insinuations. Perhaps there was a limit to what he would do for her, she considered, before quickly dismissing the idea as ridiculous. She thought of what she had said to Gabe that evening. About how she believed in finding someone you'd run through a brick wall for and making sure they knew it. As she had said it, she wasn't sure if she was referring to Marshall being willing to run through a wall for her or vice versa. Both were true and, over the years, Marshall had made sure she knew it without ever saying the words.

Lately, though, he had been more overt in his appreciation of her. Things that had only ever been implied, were suddenly being aired.

"_Pretty," Mary said, admiring the fish circling lazily in its bowl._

"_And vicious," Dom pointed out._

"_Remind you of anyone?"_

_Mary looked at him and smiled softly. "Thanks."_

She didn't think she had imagined the increase in compliments. Had they been like this before she had got involved with Raph? She struggled to recall while she discarded her empty plate in the kitchen. Was the change in their relationship just a reordering to return to a pre-Raph state? She didn't think it was. Something had changed in the intervening years.

"_Beauty that's just waiting to be discovered by someone brave enough to fight a path through the thorns."_

_"They'd have to be very brave. Or desperate," Mary added morosely._

_"Or patient."_

Marshall's words came back to her with startling clarity. Somehow she knew he had been referring to himself with that comment which made her wonder just how patient he had been. She knew it had taken her a long time to admit that they were friends and even longer to learn what friendship meant. But she had been trying recently to be a better friend, all because of a misremembered bet and a fishing trip that, it turned out, neither of them wanted to go on.

After realising that she didn't know Marshall as well as he knew her, she had tried to make sure he at least knew that she would run through a brick wall for him, even if she didn't know which his favourite Star Trek character was.

There had been hints and comments to that purpose across the years, but they had always been tongue-in-cheek or couched as an insult.

"_I'm saying that if you took the time to get to know someone first. To build an emotional connection, even, then maybe you wouldn't find sex so empty."_

"_So I can't have sex until I have an emotional connection with someone? You know how many people that's applied to over the last ten years? One. You."_

Mary recalled there had been an insult after that and something about a life of celibacy. The life of celibacy had been short-lived as she had met Raph and tried to form an emotional connection. At first she thought she had managed it. The sex had been excellent, not empty, which had made her willing to believe that there was more to their relationship than just sex. Raph had believed so too. He had pushed for more and she had finally caved.

She picked up another brochure from the top of the box. She glanced at the picture of what was supposed to be an idyllic location. She and Raph had planned to go to similar venue for their honeymoon. Then, the pictures of the perfectly kept pools and the tiki bars had held a certain appeal. Then, she had been planning to share it with Raph. Now, the vast empty beach just looked lonely.

She hadn't lied to Marshall when he'd asked about loneliness issues: She still relished the stillness that washed over her when she opened the door to her now empty house. She loved that if she left something in the fridge, it would still be there the next day. The day before, she had been able to use the washing machine without having to take a load of Brandi's things out first. But once she had done the chores that had taken her twice as long when there were three or more people in the house, she was left with nothing to do and no one to talk to. The constant quiet was beginning to get to her. Mostly because it gave her time to think. And thinking was something she wasn't good at.

She was better at action. Maybe she should call Marshall and see what he was doing. Then she remembered the weird feeling in the office after their conversation and the fact Marshall had left work early. He may not have offered his usual parting today before he left, but Mary was sure the standing offer still held.

"_Call if you need anything."_

Problem was, this time, she didn't know what she needed and didn't feel like she could call him without a reason.

As she pondered her inability to determine what she needed, she wondered if a vacation wasn't the answer. She could go somewhere isolated where she could work out what she needed in life and maybe even develop a plan for how to get it. Somewhere where there was no one trying to push their own agenda on her. Although, as she thought about it, her house was now such a location. She glanced at the brochure again. The beach did look nice. The cocktails looked even nicer. It almost looked good enough to make her forget about the discomfort of sand everywhere, even weeks later when the warm beach was just a faded memory. She flicked the brochure open and spent a while admiring the room pictures and wondering how fully she could test the room service before they got sick of her.

Did anyone really need three pools in the same hotel? she questioned as she read.

She was sure _she_ didn't – she had a perfectly good pool in her backyard.

Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to go on vacation. She wanted to go to a place where three pools wasn't an extravagance because the lines between what a person needed in life and what they wanted were blurred. Somewhere where her wants were transformed into someone else's problem and became as imperative to them as a genuine need.

She was sick of trying to work out what she needed. She spent all day every day working out what other people needed and was frustrated at her inability to perform the same action for herself. She wanted to put needs aside for a while and live in a world of wants.

In the world of wants, every whim would be catered to, not matter how trivial.

Perhaps that was why Jinx had collected these brochure, she thought. As a daydream of escape to a place where mundane worries held no ground. Mary had always rejected the idea as self-indulgent. An abandonment of responsibilities. Responsibilities that Mary had assumed whenever Jinx dropped the ball and failed to provide for her and Brandi. Luxuries such as vacations and friends faded into insignificance when the only question on your mind was whether you'd make the rent that month or be evicted.

But Mary was an adult now. She had a steady job. She no longer needed to worry about food or money or rent. Perhaps now was the time to stop worrying about what she needed and start working on what she wanted. Maybe that was why she struggled to work out what she needed. Maybe she had everything she needed and was looking at the wrong list.

She knew not everyone would agree with her definition of what should be in the needs column and what in the wants. She had spent so much of her life struggling to get what she needed to survive, food, money, rent, that she had never had time for the things on the wanted list. After the age of seven, the only wanted list she had known was the one her father was on, she reflected darkly. Stan and Jinx both thought she needed a vacation. But Stan hadn't had her childhood and didn't understand her definition of a vacation as a luxury. And Jinx, well, when had Jinx ever shown an understanding of her needs? she asked herself.

The only person who ever knew what she truly needed was Marshall and he hadn't expressed an opinion on her taking a vacation. Well, he had, just not the one she had wanted to hear. But perhaps, she continued to muse, it was the one she needed to hear. Marshall always seemed to know what she needed. Perhaps it was because he was the only one who ever bothered to ask and wait for a reply. Only once had he attempted to tell her what she needed and even then, he had changed tack halfway through, as if he had realised what he was doing and stopped himself.

"_What you need is..." he paused, revisiting what he was about to say, "I get you don't like messy, but maybe messy is what you need."_

Even when he explained what he thought she needed, he phrased it as a possibility. He gave her the option to argue the maybe not possibility.

Maybe he was right, Mary conceded.

It was more likely that he was right than Jinx, that was for sure. In all the time she had known him, he had only been wrong once and that was only because her experience with aphasia had given her a better insight into Judy than his theoretical knowledge. Judy would understand her list, Mary was sure. She lived in a black and white world that Mary still secretly envied. Despite Marshall's disagreement, she would still willingly trade some of her emotional baggage for more black and white situations in her life.

_"The grey areas in life are the interesting ones. If everything was ordered...There'd be no grey areas, no messy sections where people like you and I live and work and dare I say, thrive." _

According to Marshall, disorder, grey areas, and blurred edges should be on her needs lists, not on the wants list that Mary had assigned them to.

But switching them from one list to another implied change and she didn't like change. Messy was a big step. A step into the unknown. She didn't know if she was she brave enough to take it. It required trust. Trust in Marshall. Trust that Marshall was right about this as well as everything else.

Trust in Marshall she had, she just needed to take the step and show him. It wasn't a lot to ask. Certainly not from a man who asked nothing of her other than for her to take a chance to be happy.

She wasn't sure she knew how to be happy. She didn't know what else she needed in her life to be happy.

The one thing she knew she needed was Marshall in her life. She needed him as a buffer for her abrasiveness, as a translator, as her priest, as her friend.

He had challenged her several times recently to reach for something more. To find someone. Today's challenge had held a note of something that Mary hadn't identified at the time, and as she replayed the conversation in her mind, she still struggled to put a name to the emotions running beneath the surface of the words. Desperation? Frustration? Annoyance? Ultimatum?

For the first time since learning what the word aphasia meant, she wished her condition was worse than it was. She wanted the strange ability to read emotions without being distracted by words. She'd trade her language skills for the perception that would let her untangle the true message behind Marshall's words that afternoon.

The hint of ultimatum worried her. If she didn't take him up on his challenge this time, would she lose him? Was that the ultimatum that he had hinted at? Had he finally had enough of someone that made him happy when she was happy, but was never happy?

No, she thought, that wasn't what he said.

_"You make me happy. Especially when you're happy." _

She wanted to make him happy.

She may not know what she needed in life, but what she wanted was becoming clear.

She wanted to make Marshall happy. She wanted Marshall to be right with his assessment that she could thrive in messy. She wanted to prove to him all the things she could never find the words to say. She wanted to be happy.

It was time to take a chance. It was time to take up his challenge and delve into a messy relationship.

Taking a deep breath, she picked up the phone and dialled. Another deep breath prepared her for the plunge she was about to take as the man on the other end answered.

"So, I have this vacation time owing and Jinx has all these brochures that she's given me. The one I'm looking at seems okay, but it's a couples resort and I don't want to go alone," she said in a rush.

She paused before taking the final step into the world of messy.

"Do you want to come?"

* * *

**AN:** That's all from me for a while. Huge thanks to BuJyo and Roar who have beta-d various chapters and provided me with medical info and ideas throughout. Thank you, too, for reading and reviewing. Enjoy season 4!


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